Meeting Human Needs

The document argues that the global community must transition to a 'sustainability corridor' where human welfare is improved without overexploiting natural resources. It proposes the 'provisioning systems framework' to analyze the physical, institutional, and social structures that link human needs to resource use. The authors apply this framework to climate change mitigation, comparing different provisioning systems for charging cellphones (grid electricity versus portable solar panels) and different modes of transport (air versus road) to demonstrate why policy effectiveness varies across contexts.

• The global challenge is to improve human welfare while remaining within the 'sustainability corridor', which avoids transgressing the boundaries of sustainable natural resource use. This can be achieved by shifting the types of resources used, such as transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, or by reducing excessive consumption.
• Provisioning systems are the structures linking human needs to natural resource use, encompassing physical infrastructure, machinery for extraction, processing, and transport, as well as institutional and social systems.
• The provisioning systems framework helps explain why specific policy actions may be effective in one context but infeasible in another by illuminating the characteristics of sustainability challenges and their solutions, particularly regarding climate change mitigation.

APA

Olsson, & Dawkins (2022). Meeting Human Needs. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/publications/meeting-human-needs/

Chicago

Olsson, and Dawkins. Meeting Human Needs. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2022. https://www.sei.org/publications/meeting-human-needs/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Olsson |last2=Dawkins |title=Meeting Human Needs |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=18 May 2022 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/meeting-human-needs/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{olsson2022meeting, author = {Olsson and Dawkins}, title = {{Meeting Human Needs}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2022}, month = may, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/meeting-human-needs/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }