Drivers of CO2 emissions in the former Soviet Union: A country level IPAT analysis from 1990 to 2010

There are a small number of countries that have managed to decrease emissions over the last two decades e most of them emerged from the FSU (former Soviet Union ). CO2 emissions for these countries combined have decreased by 35% between 1990 and 2010, while global emissions increased by 44%. Most studies investigate the FSU as a single block ignoring the significant and persistent diversity among countries in the region. This study is the first providing detailed country by country analyses determining factors for changes in post-Soviet republics by applying a disaggregated version of the commonly used (IPAT) index decomposition analysis including energy intensity, affluence industrializati…

Klimats un ilgtspējīga attīstība

Drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in the Baltic States: A structural decomposition analysis

Since the mid-1990s three Baltic States have significantly increased their per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and at the same time have managed to keep the CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions low. We used structural decomposition analysis to identify the drivers of change for CO2e emissions in these countries between 1995 and 2009, a period that includes the collapse of the Soviet Union, restructuring and economic growth and the great recession. The results show that final demand has been the main driving force for increasing emissions in the Baltic States and would have caused an 80%, 64% and 143% emission increase in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, respectively, all other factors kept con…

Decomposition analysis of bioresources: Implementing a competitive and sustainable bioeconomy strategy in the Baltic Sea Region

Bioeconomy development has become one of the new trends in policy design and research. This study looks at biotic resource extraction in the Baltic Sea region countries providing detailed country by country analyses of factors affecting changes in resource extraction. The study is based on the index decomposition analysis including factors related to bioeconomy strategies such as the population, share of people employed in bioeconomy, labour intensity, biotic resource extraction productivity, share of bioeconomy, export intensity, and share of bioresource export. The main factors increasing biotic resource extraction were the growth in labour material intensity, biotic extraction productivi…

Does Car Sharing Contribute to Urban Sustainability from User-Motivation Perspectives?

Mobility, its current state and development perspectives in the future creates challenges with respect to sustainability, the first of which is the uncontrolled increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the last few decades, while road transport is one of the “sinners” creating long-term negative impact. The second is the dominance of car travel and car usage in the passenger transportation segment before the latest COVID-19 pandemic accelerated environmental problems. Although recent trends show new, greener patterns in consumption, there is still a relatively low share of consumers acknowledging the importance of sustainable and green preferences. This research study aims to investigate car…

Material flows, efficiency and decoupling: Latvia's case study

Latvia with its growing economy and intensive use of biomass is one of the biggest per capita natural resource consumers in Europe. If current patterns of resource use are maintained, environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources will continue. This paper looks at the resource flows in Latvia (1995 to 2016) - the country that does not have fossil energy resource deposits and timber industry is an important economic sector contributing most to the direct material input. It analyses the main resource flows, its intensities and looks at the main drivers behind these changes. Results demonstrate that resource extraction and consumption is steadily increasing and are not decoupled…

Environmental aspects of the implementation of bioeconomy in the Baltic Sea Region: An input-output approach

Abstract Bioeconomy is one of the main aspects of the Baltic Sea Region (BRS) Programme. However, at the national level, bioeconomy strategies are still under development in several countries. As environmental aspects are particularly important to ensure the sustainability of bioeconomy, the aim of this paper is to analyse changes in consumption- and production-based bio-resource, land and water footprints for the period of 2011–2015 and couple them with economic indicators, to assess the efficiency of bioeconomy in the BSR countries. The results show significant differences in consumption- and production-based bio-resource, land and water footprints among the BSR countries; these differenc…

Municipal waste management issues

DEPOSIT REFUND SYSTEM FOR BEVERAGE CONTAINERS IN LATVIA: LEARNINGS WITHIN THE BALTIC STATES

INTRODUCTION
 One of the main global environmental problems we are facing is the increasing the amount of waste. There are numerous policy instruments used to reduce the environmental impact of packaging. Many EU member states use producer levies, packaging and resource taxes, deposit-refund systems and producer responsibility systems (Bailey, 2017; Watkins et al., 2017).
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 In this article we conduct comparative analyses and evaluate the effectiveness of deposit-refund systems for beverage packaging in the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Data used in the study is obtained from statistical databases of the Central Statistical Bureau, E…

Household carbon footprints in the Baltic States: A global multi-regional input–output analysis from 1995 to 2011

The paper analyzes consumption related household CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions for the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from 1995 to 2011. The analysis is based on a multi-regional input–output model, which allows us to estimate life-cycle emissions for all major household consumption items. Results demonstrate that household carbon footprints in all the Baltic States significantly increased by 47% in Estonia, 20% in Latvia and 52% in Lithuania during the study period. In 2011 in Estonia expenditures for housing and utility contributed the highest per capita life-cycle emissions – 43%. However, in Lithuania housing accounted only for 16% of per capita emissions, but foo…

Impact of the environmental taxes on reduction of emission from transport in Latvia

Transport has a significant contribution to climate change and many post-Soviet republics, including Latvia, struggle to decrease these emissions to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. In this paper, ...

The Unintended Side Effects of Bioplastics: Carbon, Land, and Water Footprints

(One Earth 3, 45–53, July 24, 2020) In the originally published version of this article, the authors inadvertently used global volumes of bioplastics in plastic packaging instead of European volumes for Figure 1C. After noticing this, the authors recalculated European bioplastic packaging consumption, and as such, Figure 1 and its legend have been corrected in the online article (as shown below) to reflect all data sources used for estimating European bioplastic volumes in Figure 1C. In the Experimental Procedures, the Data and Code Availability section has been updated, and the section “Estimation of European Bioplastic Volumes” has been added. Additionally, reference 69 is new, and two in…

Materialistic values impact on pro-environmental behavior: The case of transition country as Lithuania

Abstract Materialism is becoming a global phenomenon and is increasing exponentially. Lithuania, which has survived a long period of occupation, experienced privatization and goods’ famine is attributed to the transition countries. In terms of materialistic values, Lithuania is not an exception, as material wealth and image are also very important. Thus, the main question of this paper was whether materialistic values could be reconciled with the pro-environmental behavior, which can be considered as one of the main aspects seeking sustainability. According to the Lithuanian representative survey and by applying the approach of structural equation modeling, the results showed that materiali…