Drivers of Climate Change in Urban India: Social Values, Lifestyles, and Consumer Dynamics in an Emerging Megacity

284 Pages·2019·4.4 MB·English

by  Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf

Springer Climate
Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf
Drivers of
Climate Change
in Urban India
Social Values, Lifestyles, and Consumer
Dynamics in an Emerging Megacity
Springer Climate
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Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf
Drivers of Climate Change
in Urban India
Social Values, Lifestyles, and Consumer
Dynamics in an Emerging Megacity
Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf
Member of the Leibniz Association
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Potsdam, Germany
ISSN 2352-0698 ISSN 2352-0701 (electronic)
Springer Climate
ISBN 978-3-319-96669-4 ISBN 978-3-319-96670-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96670-0
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Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change jeopardises nearly all human life-support systems,
and its mitigation represents one of the most eminent challenges to humanity. To
abate climate change, it requires long-term, globally oriented, and far-reaching
changes of the economy, of our ways of life and coexistence, and of our consump-
tion patterns. Such a transformation pertains to the state and the economy, but it also
concerns society in general and the individual consumer in particular. In order to
address this challenge and examine the interlinkages between environment, state,
economy, and society with a problem-oriented focus on the individual human being,
new and transdisciplinary approaches are urgently needed. A rather young social-
ecological research perspective combines the concept of lifestyle with issues of
sustainability and climate change.
Lifestyles are group-specific, value-, attitude-, and preference-driven patterns of
everyday life that unfold within an economically, social-culturally, and environmen-
tally prestructured field of social interaction. Such a typology-oriented approach
considers a multiplicity of driving factors and their interactions in order to get hold
of and understand group-specific differences in conduct of life and their underlying
causes, motives, and impacts. It can also highlight vantage points for targeted cli-
mate protection policies. Moreover, the study presented here developed a simple
procedure to measure the specific climate impact of single consumption practices
and their levels of diffusion. This approach reveals the most relevant areas of con-
sumption (key points of climate policy intervention). Only a few studies have cou-
pled the lifestyle concept with an approach to analyse and explain differences in
personal-level carbon footprints. This PhD thesis contributes to the theoretical and
methodological development of this approach and applies it to a context that has not
been examined in this way before – urban India.
Over the last two to three decades, India has faced unprecedented dynamics of
development and urbanisation that involve processes such as changing incomes, a
growing and increasingly globally oriented choice of goods and services, and grow-
ing social disparities. As in many other countries of the Global South, these changes
particularly concentrate in urban areas and it is often argued that a great transforma-
tion to sustainability will largely be decided in cities. This study therefore applies
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vi Abstract
the theoretical framework of lifestyle to the city of Hyderabad, a city which saw
very rapid development dynamics and which attracted attention through global and
technology-oriented urban and economic policies.
For the conceptualisation of the standardised lifestyle survey, an explorative
qualitative study was conducted with 26 semi-structured interviews. In a following
step, the resulting questionnaire was pretested, analysed, and modified accordingly.
For the main survey (n = 600), a three-stage proportionate geographical cluster sam-
pling approach was chosen. The most relevant methodical steps of the data analysis
were to develop a carbon calculator, the application of dimension reduction meth-
ods, and cluster analysis.
The analysis of income-group-specific effects on climate change revealed sig-
nificant results with higher incomes leading to higher carbon footprints, especially
with respect to household electricity consumption, individual motorised transport
(IMT), and air travel. Surprisingly, emissions from meat consumption showed nega-
tive effects with rising income.
The analysis of consumption-practice-specific effects on carbon footprints also
delivered definite results. Key points of climate policy intervention in particular are
those consumption practices which show high-carbon intensities. The analysis
reveals that such carbon-intensive practices are far less prevalent in Hyderabad, but
with a potential to spread vastly (e.g. air travel, use of air-conditioning systems).
Other practices having low emission intensities, but being extensively used, are
identified as relevant due to the potential scale effects associated with addressing
them. The analysis therefore allows for a precise and targeted assessment of differ-
ent consumption practices and their emission reduction potential.
The development of the lifestyle typology brought about meaningful and inter-
nally consistent groups of lifestyle. The analysis of the groups revealed interesting
and relevant insights with respect to the interrelated character of the incorporated
dimensions (values, practices, and social-demographic factors). Group-specific dif-
ferences concerning impacts on climate change were found among three out of six
lifestyle groups. The analysis of these differences allowed for conclusions in respect
to the underlying behavioural and motivational drivers, which tend to remain hidden
for linear models of analysis and especially for purely economic analysis. In sum,
this study was able to make an important contribution to the analysis of lifestyle-
related impacts on climate change. Although a big challenge, the application of the
lifestyle concept to the urban Indian context succeeded and delivered valuable
insights.
Acknowledgements
This thesis is the outcome of a long journey of thought and interaction. Many people
and institutions have crossed this path by discussing the challenges, ideas, and
results. This support is invaluable for the success of such thesis. I would like to
express my sincere gratitude to all of the people, who have supported this endeavour
in some or the other way.
In particular, I am very grateful to Prof. Dr. Frauke Kraas for giving me invalu-
able insights into the subject of geography and the understanding of getting closer
to those things and processes that are invisible at the first sight. She inspired me
from the first day I learned about geography and patiently guided me through to the
point I reached now. I would like to express my gratitude also to Prof. Dr. Josef
Nipper for his supervision of my PhD thesis and his supportive comments and
insights on methodology. I am also very grateful to Dr. Fritz Reusswig for inviting
me to become part of such an inspiring project and learn from him about research
on lifestyle, social-ecology, and climate change.
Some parts of this study were only possible to be realised with the great support
of Vivek Gilani. He and his colleagues developed the first Indian-specific web-based
carbon calculator, and he has developed a database for Indian-specific emission fac-
tors. Vivek was open to share his great knowledge and expertise in carbon footprint-
ing and sustainability in India. He supported the project wherever possible, and he
has become one of my best friends at the same time.
Special gratitude also goes to my direct colleagues and friends Jahid Hassan,
Sonja Hassan, Eva Eichenauer, Vera Peters, Corinna Altenburg, and Florian Winter
for patiently sharing their knowledge and greatly supporting this research for a long
time.
I am obliged to Philip Kumar and Vamsi Krishna for their great support in admin-
istering and organising the survey in Hyderabad and for being very patient and sup-
portive in conducting this rather unusual research project. I am also very thankful to
the students who conducted the standardised interviews in Hyderabad, especially
Sardhar, Mahesh J., Sreenu L., Venkat, Raju Gadepaka, Anil Kumar K., Ramesh
C. H., Christy Mathews, Mahender, Shabir Hussain, Ravinder, Tony, M. G. Devi
Prassanna, Saraswathi, Sujatha, Ali, Sri Kalyan, Rani, Rizwana, and Renuka.
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Furthermore, I would also like to thank Oleksandr Kit, Matthias Lüdeke, Diana
Reckien, Ulrike Sylla, Mirjam Neebe, Stefanie Leder, Mareike Kroll, Saskia
Ellenbeck, Nadine Kuhla, Andreas Beneking, Anselmo García Cantú Ros, Susanne
Schulz, Anne Dahmen, Julian Sagebiel, Jens Rommel, Kiran Anumandla, Thomas
Fibian, Andreas Stadler, Karsten Schulz, Helen Jakobsen, Jalal Mando, Angelique
Lustig, and Karsten Reiter for being wonderful colleagues and friends and for giv-
ing invaluable comments, ideas, and support.
I would like to thank Alison Schlums for doing a wonderful work on proofread-
ing this PhD thesis. I want to thank the Federal Ministry for Education and Research
(BMBF) for funding the project, and I want to give my regards also to Karin
Gotzmann, who was particularly supportive.
Lastly, but the most, I would like to thank Seema and Ameya for their endless
patience and support. This also goes to my mother, my sisters Ute and Birte, and my
brother Jörn.
Contents
1 Introduction: Climate Change and Lifestyle – The Relevance
of New Concepts for Social- Ecological Research ................................... 1
2 Approaches of Measuring Human Impacts on Climate Change .......... 9
3 The Research Context: India and the Megacity of Hyderabad ............ 49
4 Conceptualisation and Operationalisation – A Social
Geography of Climate Change: Social-Cultural Mentalities,
Lifestyle, and Related GHG Emission Effects in Indian Cities ............ 81
5 Results Part I: Descriptive Analysis of Manifest Variables
and Preparation of Latent Components
for the Lifestyle Analysis .......................................................................... 141
6 Results Part II: Income, Practice, and Lifestyle-Oriented
Analysis of Personal- Level GHG Emissions ........................................... 175
7 Discussion................................................................................................... 219
8 Final Conclusions: Understanding Inequalities
in Consumption-Based, Personal-Level GHG Emissions ...................... 245
References ........................................................................................................ 253
Index ................................................................................................................. 265
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