Neus Escobar
Researcher at BC3 (Basque Center for Climate Change).
This study is novel within the literature on the environmental footprint of consumption because it monetizes the global impacts per decile of spending derived from a previous study. That study calculated carbon (CO₂), phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), freshwater consumption, and biodiversity loss footprints associated with final household consumption, including energy, goods, and services. To translate these footprints from physical units to monetary values, the authors use values from the 2024 Environmental Pricing Manual, which involves certain assumptions to harmonize impact units or to scale the value of impacts according to GDP per capita. This allows them to calculate the total environmental damage cost of per capita consumption by the world's wealthiest 10% (between $2,300 and $7,500 per year), with the highest cost for consumers in the United States (between $19,000 and $63,000) and the lowest for the wealthiest consumers in India (between $410 and $1,400). The study concludes that this amount would more than cover the funding needed to achieve, as a whole, the global biodiversity conservation goals for 2030 and the climate change mitigation goals.
In this respect, the study is important because it contributes to the increasingly prominent and relevant debate on the inequality or fairness of global mitigation and sustainability goals, providing evidence that consumers in wealthier countries cause greater environmental degradation on a global scale, implying that they bear greater responsibility for exceeding planetary boundaries, with climate change and biodiversity loss being the most significant aspects.
By quantifying these impacts, the study also highlights the economic harm caused by environmental degradation and suggests that this should be compensated in some way, given that the costs of environmental damage are higher in countries with a higher GDP per capita. This also contributes to the debate on insufficient international funding for addressing environmental issues, since it is often the countries with lower GDP per capita but greater natural capital that must shoulder the greatest environmental conservation and protection efforts.
Regarding limitations, for example, it should be noted that the estimated cost of environmental damage is based on final consumption, while higher-income individuals also accumulate more savings and investments, which, if taken into account, would further widen the gap between countries and their perceived responsibility for financing environmental initiatives.
Another limitation stems from the assumptions used to quantify biodiversity loss per unit of Potentially Disappeared Fraction of Species (PDF). Among other things, this fraction was calculated without considering the affected biomes in each country (a crucial factor in responding to species loss), while monetization was calculated based on prices per PDF in Europe, which is not representative of the rest of the world. Furthermore, the study only provides values for 2017, whereas it would have been valuable to examine the evolution of damage and costs to assess the potential impact (or lack thereof) of more stringent climate targets.