Environmental Impacts from Swedish Consumption: New Indicators for Follow-up

Steinbach, N., Palm, V., Cederberg, C., Finnveden, G., Persson, L., Persson, M., Berglund, M., Björk, I., Faure, E. and Trimmer, C. (2018). Environmental Impacts from Swedish Consumption: New Indicators for Follow-up. Final report of the research project PRINCE. EPA report no. 6842. Naturvårdsverket, Stockholm. (Swedish language with English executive summary). ISBN: 978-91-620-6842-4

Overview

This report summarizes the findings of the PRINCE project, which sought to develop state-of-the-art indicators of the environmental impacts of Swedish consumption.

The report focuses on development of an innovative hybrid model that could be easily used and updated for regular follow-up of Swedish environmental policy objectives – particularly the Generational Goal, which states that environmental improvements within Sweden should not come at the cost of environmental and health problems abroad.

The model connects Sweden’s own environmental and economic accounts to Exiobase 3, a multi-regional input-output model, in order to represent both domestic and international supply chains and calculate the emissions and natural resource use occurring in different parts of the world as a result of Swedish consumption.

The report also focuses on studies within PRINCE on first-of-kind indicators for the aggregate impacts of hazardous chemical products, on the “hotspot” countries and product groups in Sweden’s consumption impacts, and on new indicators for the impacts of food production.

Short texts also introduce a range of other smaller studies within the project, on developing new or improved indicators for a range of environmental pressures. The report includes a summary in English.