The Vicious Cycle of Environmental and Economic Inequalities

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The Vicious Cycle of Environmental and Economic Inequalities

Relationship between environmental inequalities and economic inequalities resembles a vicious circle.

Lucas Chancel, Malcolm DeBevoise, translator. 2020. Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment, Harvard University Press. 

Sources: 

https://www.iddri.org/en/publications-and-events/blog-post/unsustainable-inequalities

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2020/09/08/unsustainable-inequalities/

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984653

Does a hurricane discriminate between the wealthy and the poor? Do earthquakes target specific victims? How does systemic racism influence development goals? In academic explorations of sustainable development and environmental responsibilities, our assumptions about the relationship between income and energy consumption remain largely rooted in the idea that social inequalities decrease as countries develop, thus reducing environmental inequality. No such relationship appears to actually exist.

In his sobering but essential new book, Unsustainable Inequalities, French economist Lucas Chancel explores the intersections of social justice and environmental sustainability and argues relationship between environmental inequalities and economic inequalities resembles a vicious circle. Framing his narrative through the lens of intragenerational economic inequalities, he identifies social inequality as a core driver of environmental unsustainability that leads to a vicious circle wherein the rich consume more and the poor lose access to environmental resources and become increasingly vulnerable to environmental shocks.

In a context of growing inequalities and endemic unemployment, environmental policies are often perceived as additional obstacles or even as measures detrimental to the poor. Indeed, Donald Trump recently declared that he was pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change precisely because he claimed that it was unfavorable to workers in the United States. Yet a close link exists between environmental and socioeconomic injustice.

The vicious circle of socio-environmental inequalities

In all countries the relationship between environmental inequalities and economic inequalities resembles a vicious circle. In the North and South alike, the rich are generally less exposed to environmental risks (pollution, climate-related misfortunes, fluctuations in the cost of natural resources, and so on) than the poor, who do not have the means either to protect themselves against them or to recover when disaster strikes. The catastrophe visited upon New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 furnished a tragic example of what happens when rich and poor do not have the same degree of resilience in the face of calamity. The injustice of environmental inequalities mechanically reinforces the injustice of socioeconomic inequalities: deteriorating health due to pollution, or, in the case of natural disaster, to the destruction of places where people live and work, makes the situation of the most impoverished still more precarious and, as a consequence, worsens their position in relation to the rest of society. The dynamic at work here has aptly been called a poverty-environment trap.

To this vicious circle must be added another, arising from the unjust allocation of responsibility for environmental damages. Contrary to what certain authors maintain, it is not true that, beyond a certain level of income, people seek to reduce their level of pollution because they can afford to do so. With only rare exceptions, it is the wealthiest whose ecological imprint is the greatest. To use the technical term, there is no environmental Kuznets curve—no rise in the level of pollution up to a certain level of income,  followed by a decline once this threshold is reached, at which point the environment begins magically to be protected. With regard to a majority of the most harmful pollutants, particularly greenhouse gases, and with regard to water and land-use requirements for satisfying rising levels of household consumption demand, no such pattern has been observed. Socioenvironmental injustice is therefore twofold and symmetric: the biggest polluters are typically the ones who are least affected by the damages they cause.

It must also be kept in mind that those who suffer most from environmental degradation are often those whose voices are least heard when it comes to deciding the fate of the environment; they are also the ones who are most affected by environmental protection measures that do not take their interests directly into account.

Therefore, five forms of environmental inequality: unequal access to natural resources can be identified: unequal exposure to the risks of environmental disturbance; unequal responsibility for the degradation of natural resources; unequal exposure to the effects of environmental protection policies; unequal say in decisions concerning the management of natural resources.

The poorest individuals have less access to environmental resources such as water, power, or quality nutrition. For instance, Indian citizens on a very low income use a total of 4 kWh of power to meet all their needs, whereas an affluent fellow citizen uses 10 times that amount. In France, the 10% of individuals on the lowest incomes use 73 kWh per person compared to 262 kWh for the wealthiest 10%. Not all are equally equipped to face environmental risks. This assessment particularly applies to the impact of pollution on health. In France, 50,000 premature deaths occur as a result of air pollution. The urban working-class bears much of the burden, spending more time in public transportation than the average and often living in housing with poor ventilation. When it comes to natural disasters such as floods, droughts, or severe storms, the poorest individuals are the most exposed and the most vulnerable. In the United Kingdom, among the 10% of individuals on the lowest incomes, 16% live in flood risk areas compared to less than 1% among the top 10%. Internationally, more than 2.5 billion people live less than 100 km from a coastline, and of those, over 75% live in a developing country. While the least affluent individuals are disproportionally affected by the consequences of climate change and other environmental disruptions, they contribute the least to their causes. Internationally, the top 10% wealthiest individuals (primarily Americans and Europeans but also rich Chinese, Saudi, or Latin American citizens) generate 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while for the 50% least affluent individuals, that figure drops to 13%. When income increases by 1 percent, carbon emissions increase within a range of 0.6 percent to very slightly more than 1 percent, depending on the country, with a median value of about 0.9 percent. The figure linking increases in income with increases in emissions is called “income-emissions elasticity.”

Economic inequalities determine environmental inequalities to a large extent: the poorest have a harder time, by definition, in gaining access to marketable natural resources (such as energy), but they also are more exposed to environmental risks and, as a result, are always more vulnerable to injury. Moreover, economic inequalities are the principal determinant of inequalities in greenhouse gas emissions.

Second, environmental inequalities aggravate existing economic and social inequalities. Unequal access to limited quantities of energy has a negative impact on mental and physical development as well as on educational opportunity. Unequal exposure to the effects of pollution and other sources of environmental damage perpetuates and accentuates these same disadvantages, in industrialized and emerging countries alike

A new social state

How can we break the vicious circle of socio-environmental inequalities?

Putting social justice at the heart of the campaign for sustainable development means that the social and environmental policies presently in place in both industrialized and developing countries will have to be overhauled. Reconciling social justice and protecting our planet is possible, but it requires a new stride in the construction of the social State, which will need to be redesigned to define the integration of environmental risks and the traditional tools of social protection. First, we need new tools for measuring and mapping environmental inequalities; Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which continues to be used as a compass of progress, does not take into account the issue of inequality or the degradation of the environment. To this end, the implementation by the United Nations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, is laudable. All countries, rich and poor, have decided to implement a set of indicators that notably take into account inequalities reduction and environmental protection. While the adoption of a common metric with which to measure progress on several dimensions is far from sufficient, it is a genuine step forward, and it is now up to civil society to keep governments accountable.

We also need to harmonize traditional social policies and environmental protection policies. Environmental taxation—including a carbon tax or the removal of fossil fuel subsidies—can be a powerful tool in this regard. Particularly in developing countries, governments’ fossil fuel subsidies largely benefit the better-off, whose lifestyle is more polluting. Removing these subsidies would therefore constitute a socially and environmentally conscious measure. Yet in a few years, when the middle-class citizens of emerging economies all have their own car, implementing such reforms will constitute a social challenge. There is therefore a historic window of opportunity that should not be missed, as Indonesians or Iranians have shown by undertaking such reforms recently.

Finally, the social State will have to take a comprehensive—both domestic and global—look at the impact of its existing policies. Social policies at the national level can quickly turn out to be helpless in the face of rising social and environmental inequalities. Nation States must move forward together on this point at both the regional and the global level. Meanwhile, the social State must look toward subnational jurisdictions and join forces with local movements and harness their energy since these are rich in initiatives and forms of solidarity. Civil associations are wary, sometimes rightfully so, of social or environmental preaching. Yet without the umbrella of the social State or international coordination, they also turn out to be powerless in taking on social and environmental crises. It is therefore necessary to reject the false dichotomy between global and local action. As a matter of fact, the necessary metamorphosis of the social State sketched out above is already under way. The paradox is that this transformation is both within reach and remote. Positive examples exist in all countries, whether industrialized or developing. Yet it will require greater imagination, energy, and determination from all stakeholders, citizens, researchers, private sector stakeholders, and elected officials to deliver this fair and sustainable future.

The notion that we may be able to attain sustainable development and achieve equal responsibility for environmental degradation feels more unreachable than ever in a world upended by a global pandemic. In prepandemic times, many nations had already failed to implement or participate in local and global environmental justice efforts, and taxation schemes to level responsibilities for environmental pollution have proven wildly unpopular. And while Chancel argues that common indicator frameworks such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals encourage nations to learn from one another, the continued rise of social inequality is a stark reminder of the difficult road ahead.

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