The Principle of Sufficiency and the Constitutionalization of Consumption Limits: Towards a New Legal-Environmental Standard in Latin America

Abstract

This paper explores the principle of sufficiency as a legal tool to address the ecological crisis and to rethink the relationship between individual freedom and consumption limits. Unlike classical approaches to equality or sustainability, sufficiency does not seek to ensure that everyone has the same, but rather to guarantee that no one falls below a dignified minimum threshold of resources, while not exceeding the planet’s ecological limits. The analysis combines European experiences with Latin American innovations, particularly the constitutional recognition of the rights of nature and the principle of Sumak Kawsay. Based on these references, it examines how sufficiency can function as a binding criterion for legal interpretation and as a legitimate limit to certain fundamental rights when their exercise threatens the integrity of ecosystems or intergenerational equity. The article concludes that incorporating sufficiency into public policy, jurisprudence, and environmental education is not only desirable but urgent, to move toward a development model
in which well-being is measured not by unlimited consumption but by harmony between people and nature. Rereading freedom in light of biophysical limits is therefore an essential condition to halt environmental degradation and to build societies committed to environmental protection.

Keywords: Sufficiency, constitutionalism, Sumak Kawsay, consumption limits, individual freedom, Latin America, environmental law