Urban and rural carbon footprints in developing countries

Abstract

A good understanding of household carbon emissions is an important part of forming climate mitigation strategies to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. Numerous studies have been carried out on emissions from household consumption and the inequality between urban and rural areas in high-income developed countries, but there is a lack of in-depth analysis of such differences in developing countries. Our research details household carbon footprints (CFs) of four urban and four rural income categories for 90 developing countries, by linking global expenditure data to the environmentally extended multi-regional input–output approach. We show that there are large inequalities between urban and rural areas in developing countries. The average per capita CF in urban areas tends to be larger than that of rural inhabitants ranging from twice as large to nine times larger. We find that electricity consumption and transport are the largest contributors to the total CF in all expenditure groups. High-income rural households have an average per capita CF of 12.38 t CO2 which is 25% higher than the equivalent urban high-income group, which deviates from the literature looking at a subset of cases. Our study contributes to the existing research on CFs by providing knowledge on the consumption patterns and related carbon emissions of urban and rural populations in these understudied parts of the world.

The driving factors behind urban communities’ carbon emissions in the selected urban villages of Jakarta, Indonesia

“…increasing environmentally friendly awareness by government with their policy and programs to mitigate carbon emissions and global warming ( [13]. Some studies explored the association human lifestyle at urban city and carbon emissions in developing countries such as Japan, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia [2][3][4][5][6]. Change in lifestyle covering housing, food, and mobility reduced carbon footprints in Japan communities [2].…”

“…Transportation-related emissions and cooking fuels emissions were the biggest contributor of carbon emissions in Indonesia [3]. Electricity consumption and transport are the largest contributors to the total carbon emissions in developing countries [4]. Urbanization in developing countries through economic scale, energy consumption and transportation increase carbon emissions [5].…”

“…A study conducted by the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) in 2010, employed a carbon footprint calculator tool revealed that urban patterns, lifestyles, and energy consumption contribute to carbon emissions [1]. However, until recently, only few studies have explored the role of urban behavioral patterns or lifestyle on the total expenditure of carbon emissions mainly in the developing countries such as Japan, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia [2][3][4][5][6]. The limitation of five previous studies were did not analyze the relationship between climate change and carbon emissions knowledge and urban human communities' carbon emissions.…”

“…Some preliminary studies mentioned that the most expenditure of urban lifestyle contributing to carbon emissions was electricity consumption and transportation in some developing countries such as India, China, and Egypt [4] and Japan [2]. Ahmad and Felix (2019) stated that the income and urbanization were the most contributors of house-hold carbon footprints in India [12].…”

Assessing the nexus of gross national expenditure, energy consumption, and information & communications technology toward the sustainable environment: Evidence from advanced economies

“…Increasing the size of the population advances the demand for energy, which fosters CO 2 secretion. Likewise, the differentiation of lifestyle and income level (Connolly et al, 2022) between the urban and rural income levels influences energy consumption and CO 2 emission. The per capita in rural areas grows with the population, substantially intensifying carbon emission (Zhang & Li, 2022).…”