Happiness and well-being in the contemporary global debate on environmental sustainability

Author: Dr Camila Horst Toigo – Economist and specialist in sustainable finance

Once, at a talk I was giving, I questioned the guests about who was happy. Everyone raised their hands, unsurprisingly. But when I asked who could explain to me exactly what it was to be happy, it took a while for a hand to be raised again.

Everyone wants to be happy and to flourish in life, but what does it mean in the contemporary world? Since the last century, the concept of happiness has been revisited, allowing new insights into what makes people truly happy. Different elements have been considered important predictors of human well-being, such as equality, education, knowledge, mental and physical health.

Additionally, the increasing debate about sustainability has put under the spotlight environmental aspects of human well-being. With growing awareness of climate change, we have an opportunity to explore the theme of “happiness” in the contemporary global debate on environmental sustainability.

Happiness, well-being and environment

As I have pointed out in the paper “Happier and greener? The relationship between subjective well-being and environmental performance”¹, published in the International Journal of Social Economics, several researchers have put effort into understanding the relationship between happiness and environmental variables, like air pollution, rising temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions and local environmental features. Most of them have emphasised the impacts on both physical and mental well-being, consequently leading to different levels of happiness – regardless of what "to be happy" means.

In my paper, I have advanced on the debate by proposing to understand the impact of environmental policy on people's happiness, looking to how the relationship changes when we examine different political systems. Starting with one extreme scenario, I asked myself if it was possible to feel happy living in an autocratic country with low environmental performance – the latter in terms of lacking initiatives or low institutional capacity, or both.

As I expected, the initial exploratory analysis pointed out that, on average, the world sits at an average level of happiness and performs poorly on environmental commitments, both on a national and global scale (as the slow progress on COP negotiations has corroborated).

By looking for arguments to support the evidence, I have found some studies arguing weaknesses in economics and democracy are directly correlated with happiness level and environmental performance. Many studies have argued that these elements are triggers of happiness since they reflect long-term processes and decision-making and should, therefore, be more central to the debate on well-being and sustainability.

What have my findings revealed?

The wealthiest, freest and most egalitarian countries displayed the highest levels of happiness and environmental performance. Additionally, the levels of happiness and environmental commitment between countries differ according to their status of freedom and, therefore, with their level of effective democracy. Answering my previous question, the results have suggested living in an autocratic country with low environmental performance tends to lead lower levels of happiness.

In order to corroborate the findings, I observed the impact of other variables on such relationships. The "perception of corruption", for example, has shown an opposite impact on the free countries population’ happiness. In other words, the more fraudulent and dishonest is the conduct of institutions in democratic countries, the lower the level of happiness in their societies. I verified the same thing in terms of environmental performance. These results support the argument about the role of effective democracy and freedom in the context of environmental quality as a predictor of happiness.

As I concluded in the paper "at least at the macro-spatial level, the self-reported level of happiness depends substantially on the underlying socio-economic and political context, which, in turn, influences decision-making related to sustainability. That is probably why developed countries score best in terms of environmental performance and happiness when compared to developing countries". Therefore, we cannot disassociate the political sphere from environmental decisions and behaviour.

¹Toigo, C.H. and de Mattos, E.J. (2021), "Happier and greener? The relationship between subjective well-being and environmental performance", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 48 No. 12, pp. 1697-1717. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-01-2021-0008