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Oxford research finds association between sustainability and happiness

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New research shows a possible link between sustainable development and well-being.

Sustainable development may make people happier. According to new research from the University of Oxford, progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which cover objectives ranging from climate change adaptation to the eradication of poverty, has a positive correlation with wellbeing.

The research paper, which analyses data from the SDG Index together with subjective evaluations of wellbeing from the Gallup World Poll, is jointly authored by Dr. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, associate professor of economics at the Saïd Business School and Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford, and leading development economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. 

Published in Nature's Scientific Reports, the paper suggests that countries with a higher SDG Index score tend to also do better in terms of subjective well-being, with Nordic countries topping both rankings. The authors’ findings suggest that as countries become richer, the wellbeing of their citizens appears to stagnate unless further economic growth is made more sustainable by, for example, addressing inequality.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

The findings also suggest that, while long-term environmental measures may have a positive association with well-being, some short-term efforts towards sustainability might in fact have a negative correlation with well-being. Nations like Canada and the UK, where citizens use a lot of resources per person, appear to be happier than India and China, which consume less per capita.

The authors suggest that this relationship could be partly explained by economic development, as countries with higher GDPs tend to consume more, which is associated with higher living standards; However, the findings suggest that, even when economic development is accounted for, low consumption per capita appears to be related to people being less happy. People seem to be gloomier in countries with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but this effect largely disappeared when the authors accounted for levels of economic development in their research. 

The authors identify a number of countries which have both maintained wellbeing and perform well on sustainable consumption and emissions reduction. 

Germany has invested heavily in renewable energy infrastructure, providing ‘green jobs’ while simultaneously reducing emissions. The combination of carbon taxes and incentives for renewable energy, combined with ambitious social policy, has allowed the Nordic countries to transition away from fossil fuels, without punishing low-income families with higher energy bills. 

Equally, Costa Rica is among the top countries for investment in new renewable power and fuels relative to GDP, and has committed to achieving carbon neutrality starting from 2021. It thus offers an alternative model for developing countries to avoid the Western carbon-intensive development path, the researchers say. 

We find a strong correlation between achieving sustainable development and self-reported measures of well-being.

Lead author Dr De Neve

'People are willing to pay for observably cleaner air and there is evidence to suggest that being exposed to nature improves mental health', De Neve added.

'Well-being is correlated with the long-term outcomes of environmental policies, but there isn’t necessarily a positive correlation with the short-term efforts required by such policies. We find that this is certainly the case for SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and this makes it even more challenging for policy-makers to address this particular sustainable development goal.'

Professor Jeffrey Sachs commented:

'The ultimate goal of politics is wellbeing, which the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia. Our study suggests that sustainable development is not only correlated with wellbeing, but apparently with increasing marginal returns. This is in distinction with income, which contributes to wellbeing with decreasing marginal returns. The holistic approach of sustainable development, combining economic, social and environmental objectives, account for the linkages with wellbeing, with the strength of the linkages depending on the national context.'

The SDGs and human well‑being: a global analysis of synergies, trade‑offs, and regional differences