A global overview of developments of urban and rural household GHG footprints from 2005 to 2015

Rong Yuan; João F D Rodrigues; Juan Wang; Arnold Tukker; Paul Behrens

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150695

A global overview of developments of urban and rural household GHG footprints from 2005 to 2015

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Feb 1;806(Pt 2):150695. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150695. Epub 2021 Sep 29.

Authors

Rong Yuan¹, João F D Rodrigues², Juan Wang³, Arnold Tukker⁴, Paul Behrens⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Economics and Business Management, Chongqing University, Shazhengjie 174, 400040 Chongqing, China; Institute of Environmental Sciences, CML, Leiden University, Einsteinweg 2, 2333 CC Leiden, the Netherlands.
² Institute of Environmental Sciences, CML, Leiden University, Einsteinweg 2, 2333 CC Leiden, the Netherlands.
³ College of Finance, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, 300222 Tianjin, China. Electronic address: j.wang@tjufe.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute of Environmental Sciences, CML, Leiden University, Einsteinweg 2, 2333 CC Leiden, the Netherlands; The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Anna van Buerenplein 1, 2595 DA, Den Haag, the Netherlands.
⁵ Institute of Environmental Sciences, CML, Leiden University, Einsteinweg 2, 2333 CC Leiden, the Netherlands; Leiden University College The Hague, Leiden University, Anna van Buerenplein 301, 2595 DG The Hague, the Netherlands.

PMID: 34597577
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150695

Abstract

Household greenhouse-gas footprints (HGFs) are an important source of global emissions but can vary widely between urban and rural areas. These differences are important during the ongoing rapid, global, urbanization process. We provide a global overview of HGFs considering this urban-rural divide. We include 16 global regions, representing 80% of HGFs and analyze the drivers of urban and rural HGFs between 2005 and 2015. We do this by linking multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables with household consumption surveys (HCSs) from 43 regions. Urban HGFs from high-income regions continue to dominate, at 75% of total HGFs over 2010-2015. However, we find a significant increase of rural HGFs (at 1% yr^-1), reflecting a convergent trend between urban and rural HGFs. High-income regions were responsible for the majority of urban HGFs (USA: 27.8% and EU: 18.7% in 2015), primarily from transport and services, while rural HGFs were predominately driven in emerging regions (China: 24% and India: 21.8% in 2015) mainly driven by food and housing. We find that improving emission intensities do not offset the increase in HGFs from increasing consumption and population during the period. A broad transition of expenditure from food to housing in rural areas and to transport in urban areas highlights the importance of reducing the emission intensities of food, housing, and transportation. Counterintuitively, urbanization increased HGFs in emerging regions, resulting in a >1% increase in China, Indonesia, India and Mexico over the period, due to large migrations of people moving from rural to urban areas.

Keywords: Consumption structure; Household GHG footprints; Urban-rural differences; Urbanization.

MeSH terms

China
Family Characteristics
Greenhouse Gases*
Humans
Rural Population
Urban Population
Urbanization

Substances

Greenhouse Gases