A new study identifies connections between inequality and the environment. For instance changes in fish stocks affect the livelihood of men and women differently. Photo: O. Photo: B. Rising inequalities and accelerating environmental change are two of the most significant challenges of the twenty-first century.
But how are they linked? Scientists still struggle to answer that question. A new study in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources presents a literature review of the linkages between social inequality and changes in the environment. It is an outcome of the Beijer Young Scholars programme which consists of a transdisciplinary group of 19 early career scholars from around the world.
Link to publication. Request publication Their study shows that most research is one-directional, i. Two of them demonstrate how environmental changes such as extreme weather events and disease outbreaks, or more gradual changes such as climate change, increase or decrease inequalities in communities. The other four pathways look at how inequality has an effect on the environment through human actions, which can be shaped by perceptions of fairness, personal aspirations, collaboration and decision-making.
Interactions between inequality and the biosphere in social-ecological systems. The biosphere is naturally unequal. Not all places on Earth are equally endowed with access to energy resources, freshwater reserves or appropriate conditions for large-scale agricultural production. That has led to an inequality of opportunities for societal development and economic expansion in different parts of the globe. However, natural disasters such as storms, floods, droughts and epidemics tend to hit low-income communities the hardest, wherever they are.
Hurricane Katrina, an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August , is one example. When the levees broke in New Orleans, floodwater surged into low-lying areas that were mostly populated by the economically marginalised, notably African-American communities.
This impact was further exacerbated by their lack of access to transport and ability to evacuate. Possibly there is a lot less concern about wasting water in more unequal countries. It is not that people are cleaner and wash more often in the more inequitable countries per person, the Japanese buy the most soap worldwide , and it is certainly not that they are drinking more water.
What is happening is that they are wasting more, and that may be related to a more general ethos that people should be free to do as they wish and damn the consequences for others — an ethos that appears to be far more prevalent in more inequitable countries.
The most damaging form of pollution in terms of absolute effect is the carbon dioxide CO2 we are responsible for releasing into the atmosphere. Residents of the US contribute more emissions of CO2 than any other of the 25 rich countries featured. US emissions per person are almost twice those of the Japanese, and more than three times those of the French. In general, the more economically unequal a rich country is, the more CO2 it emits.
In contrast, Australia mines and burns a great deal more coal and also, incidentally, mines a large amount of uranium. In Oxfam reported in detail on why emissions from some countries were so much greater than others see chart above. Collaborating with economists including Thomas Piketty, it discovered that what drove excessive consumption in any particular affluent country was economic inequality, because the best-off in a country tend to waste more energy, heat their homes more than they need to, drive more than they need to in bigger gas-guzzling cars, take more flights and require more cement and other materials to construct their larger-than-needed buildings — while at the same time buying and throwing away more items.
Our excessive use of motor vehicles contributes not only CO2 but also other damaging gases such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as pumping particulate matter into the air we all breathe. Among the most affluent 25 countries, three stand out as extreme in this regard: the US, Canada and Australia.
These three are among the least-densely populated countries in the rich world, and driving distances between homes and workplaces are often long, but they have chosen to arrange their cities in this way.
In these three cases, there are large dense urban areas that can only function with good public transport such as underground trains, buses and trams. But it is worth noting that no relatively equal affluent country consumes more than half as much gasoline as people in Canada and the US do each year. All of us will have to consume far less fossil fuel in the near future, and those reductions will be far more easily achieved in a country that sees the provision of efficient, low-polluting public transport as a collective good rather than a dangerous precedent.
Consider the proportion of people who cycle or walk to work in each country. Everything is connected. But behind all of these factors lies the basic difference in how human beings are ranked.
Rank them sky high by paying them many times more than other people, and they can become so conceited that they more easily treat others who are less well-off poorly, with no respect and with little empathy. They then argue for cycle routes, pavements, good public transport, and to be able to afford to live near where they work. Even in the US, there is still much hope — new learning occurring and new understanding growing — but it is happening locally rather than nationally.
In Seattle , a 20mph limit was agreed in for all residential streets in the city. The downtown arterial roads in that city will now be limited to 25mph, making it far safer to cycle along those roads and to cross them as a pedestrian.
Such measures, of course, also encourage people not to believe their car will get them from place to place more quickly than others can travelling by bus or, where it is available, by light rail.
This effect is evident when air pollution is shown to be significantly greater in the poorest 20 percent of neighbourhoods in the UK. Yet the recent resignation of all four members of the Social Mobility Commission shows the lack of progress we have made in tackling inequality.
Greater effort to reduce economic inequality is needed in the UK, if we are to reduce damage to the environment without further hardening the lives of the worse off in society. The link between economic inequality and unequal environmental impacts can be seen on a global scale as well. A recent study by the World Bank found that most people live in countries where poorer residents are more exposed to disasters like droughts, floods and heat waves.
Higher income countries nearly always have better infrastructure and planning in place for environmental disasters. For example, while 91 percent of farmers in the US have crop insurance to cover losses in the event of extreme weather only 15 percent of Indian farmers and 1 percent of farmers in Malawi do. It is clear that poorer people, both within countries and globally feel the negative impacts of environmental damage more than their higher income counterparts. When climate disasters do occur, higher income countries also recover far quicker.
While Japan recovered from its earthquake rapidly , with railways 80 percent in operation within a month, Haiti is still severely battling with homelessness, cholera and mass food shortages from its earthquake of similar magnitude.
Climate change, with its ability to push the most vulnerable in the world into extreme poverty, is detrimental to economic equality globally. In order to tackle inequality, it is vital that steps are taken to reduce damage to the environment. It might be sadly unsurprising that the worst off in society are also the most likely to suffer from environmental damage, but is the existence of economic inequality itself bad for the environment?
Increasingly, evidence suggests that more unequal affluent countries generate higher levels of pollution than their more equal counterparts. They create more waste, eat more meat and produce more carbon dioxide. Instead those in more unequal societies experience status anxiety.
They are more likely to aim for unattainable consumption goals set by the rich, and therefore they consume more at a faster rate, as this is perceived as a sign of success. This is problematic as the rich tend to consume far more than the rest of the population. It can be argued that the notion of economic growth with its ever increasing production rate, has become a substitute for equality of opportunity and income. If this is the case then it spells disaster for the environment. More equal societies are therefore needed to change how and what people consume.
While fast developing countries like China and India are perceived as the new drivers of greenhouse gas production, it is important to recognise that individual consumption is responsible for 64 percent of global emissions , and much of what is produced in developing countries is for the consumption of those in more affluent countries. The fact that more than two-thirds of plastic packaging waste in the UK was exported for recycling last year , further demonstrates the need for higher-income countries to take more responsibility for the environmental damage that they create.
The only beneficiaries of inadequate climate action are those that have a vested interest in a high carbon and deeply unequal global economy. It shows a preference for short term economic gain, of which the rich elite benefit the most, over mitigating long term environmental consequences, felt most by the poorest globally.
Getting to and enjoying green spaces, forests, riverbanks or coastlines requires a number of social, economic and cultural capital. Moving to this type of space involves costs and requires knowledge of the territory and its particular characteristics.
These possible configurations cross most of the time and can be read at several scales. Thus, the unequal contribution to environmental damage can be seen at the global level through the effect of the globalization of flows.
In , a boat, the Probo Koala, spilled highly toxic substances in Abidjan, killing seventeen people and killing tens of thousands. Figure 6. Gypsum is the raw material for making plaster. Thus, the Paris Metropolitan Area imports some of these raw materials gypsum, etc.
Similarly, this diversity makes it possible to highlight that environmental inequalities do not only reinforce social or spatial inequalities or lead to a re-reading of the latter through the prism of environmental issues. The latter can also structure spatial or social inequalities.
Hence the modalities of remediation, repair or compensation depend on a detailed knowledge of the situation producing them. In the context of environmental inequalities, it would mean that everyone suffers the same environmental disadvantages e. A morally just policy is one that produces the greatest happiness for members of society. As such, if a project is useful to the greatest number of people, it cannot be called into question by the effects suffered by a minority because they constitute a lesser evil.
However, this approach has evolved over the course of many debates. The latter admits that there may be inequalities in social justice as long as it favours the most disadvantaged, and at the same time, sets strict conditions for these inequalities. Therefore, it must be possible to correct the negative effects of certain measures or policies on the poorest… …? But the complexity and diversity of these inequalities also imply a diversity of responses that are not always easy to design or implement.
How do we proceed then? All existing measures are often inconsistent with each other and do not aim to reduce inequalities, despite the efforts of some communities. In the following sub-sections, we present mechanisms to shift costs to the one that produces the impact by modulating the polluter-pays principle, as well as how the issue appears on the political agenda local and national in the United States and France.
Figure 7. Landing in the middle of buildings in Hong Kong. However, the relationship between the polluted and the polluter, between the producer of nuisances and the victim of these nuisances is highly unequal, since local residents rarely have as much financial, political or organisational resources as the developer or operator. As a result, the internalization of costs will emerge in part:. Figure 8. Scientists, associations and concerned inhabitants initially denounce the polluted environments in which Black African populations are confined Figure 8 and seek to objectify them by scientifically demonstrating the correlation.
In the early s, the activism of associations and opinion leaders made it possible to institutionalize environmental justice.
Thus is taken by President Bill Clinton, Executive Order requiring all federal agencies to integrate an objective of environmental justice by identifying and addressing any impact that would disproportionately affect the poor or minority populations, or jeopardize their health.
Moreover, twenty years later, the results of this integration into the political agenda remain relatively meagre in order to reduce the burden of nuisances, risks and pollution on minorities and poor populations and are more readable from a procedural point of view.
Indeed, even if there is an obligation to take into account in the paper-based procedures of environmental justice communities, the reality remains the same in terms of overexposure of minority populations. In France [28] , environmental inequalities are currently mainly addressed through three main channels: environmental health through the National Environmental Health Plan, fuel poverty [29] and access to healthy food. Environmental inequalities are increasingly tending to integrate the public agenda and question the practices of planners.
As announced by N. Environmental inequalities are not a new phenomenon; situations of social vulnerability coupled with environmental situations exposure to pollutants, lack of access to amenities, etc.
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