There are significant barriers to the widespread adoption of sufficiency, as it goes against current dominant social paradigms (economic growth focus, materialism, individualism, etc.).
[5] As an increasing number of experts consider that technical progress and greener technologies alone will not be enough to achieve this goal, sufficiency also designates the societal transformations (in terms of lifestyles, social practices, infrastructures, etc.)
[6] The IPCC defines sufficiency as "a set of policy measures and daily practices that avoid the demand for energy, materials, land, water, and other natural resources while providing wellbeing for all within the planetary boundaries".
The concept of sufficiency has been primarily developed in the area of energy consumption, where levels of greenhouse gas emissions far exceed what the planet may absorb and "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" are necessary according to IPCC.
Academic work released in 2022 systematically classified and databased specific public policy measures that can, individually collectively, contribute to the uptake energy sufficiency.
Similar to energy sufficiency, it consists in reducing demand for services and activities requiring high level of material resources, and favouring intrinsically lean ones.
[15] Sufficiency largely remains a blindspot in most established ecological/energy transition scenarios, where efficiency and greener technologies are the main and only strategies usually modelled.
A German study found that sufficiency measures could lead to a theoretical reduction of 70% of energy consumption at the level of households.
[19] In order to encourage and improve the robustness and visibility of sufficiency modelling in energy scenarios, guidelines and recommendations have been published e.g. by the Ministry of Environment in Germany,[20] or the SHIFT Project in France[21]).
While several established environmental strategies and policies do not question upstream the need for perpetual growth in energy and material services, sufficiency does.
The "Four D's" suggested by Wolfgang Sachs are one example:[22] The discussion about sufficiency principles is not restricted to a particular area or sector, and may relate to broad lifestyle aspects such as quality of life and work-life balance.
The following (non-exhaustive) list provides some:[24][25] One of the main barriers to sufficiency, often put forward by sceptics, is the dominant social paradigm in liberal societies which values material possession, greed, power, individualism, social differentiation through consumption, and other mindsets that conflict with the mentalities that sufficiency requires (temperance, moderation, downsizing, etc.).
Sufficiency supposes a moderation in the consumption and development of high energy-based and material-based services, which are often delivered by or associated with goods and equipment.
A common criticism, shared with the degrowth concept, is that this would hurt economic growth, increase unemployment and lead to social problems.
While it is clear that current energy and resource intensive services would be hit by sufficiency, leaner, more local, and employment-intensive activities would also be fostered in the meantime.
The project involves researchers from Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, and is funded through the financial support of the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme.
This project involves multidisciplinary qualitative and modelling approaches to answer three research questions: What are the biophysical resources required to achieve human well-being?
The central question is how municipal administrations are (not) able to influence city development so that people can live well while consuming as few resources as possible (focus on housing, mobility and land use).
This project is rooted in Austria and Germany (BOKU and University of Duisburg-Essen), and is about sufficiency and especially consumption reduction communication (with a consumer perspective, involving the disciplines economic psychology/marketing).
This French research-action programme aims at studying how sufficiency governance may be considered at various levels, and how it can be experienced as a lifestyle change, a new economic model, or a local planning vision.
Surveys and interviews, as well as living lab experiments, will help better understand how consumers react to energy crises and implement sufficiency actions.
The interdisciplinary project team aims to reduce the ecological burden by encouraging young people to use media in a way that is lighter on resources.
(project duration: 2021–2025) The primary objective of the MidWay-project is to probe the concept of sufficiency as a useful organising principle to achieve reduced consumption based on the empirical inputs from meat and milk practices in China.
The projekt from Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), adelphi and Heidelberger Energiegenossenschaften focuses on how energy cooperatives can encourage their members and customers to lead a sufficiency-oriented lifestyle.
Funded by Innoviris (Research administration of the Brussels Region, 2020–2023) The project identifies sufficiency approaches in the building sector and political-legal measures for their strategic anchoring and support, with which potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be exploited in addition to efficiency and consistency strategies.
This project supported by ADEME aimed at analysing how far innovative collective schemes promoting acculturation to sufficiency may contribute to a widespread participation of consumers to the transition towards sustainability.
Two reports were published: one focusing on sufficiency modelling in food, material goods, buildings, and mobility (2013), the other added considerations about barriers, social innovation approaches, and socio-economic impacts of sufficiency-based strategies (2016).
SuPraStadt stands for quality of life, participation and resource conservation through social diffusion of sufficiency practices in urban neighborhoods.The project focused on transdisciplinary cooperation with three real laboratories with three different lead actors: a civil society initiative in Heidelberg, the municipality in Dortmund and a housing industry company in Kelsterbach.