correlation between inequality and ecological sustainability.

correlation between inequality and ecological sustainability.

Wealth or to be more accurate, income inequality has a significant influence on ecological sustainability in terms of wealthy people who can easily skew policies on sustainability and a greener environment. In contrast, poor people must live with the consequences. Countries where the Gini coefficient is closer to zero, meaning income has been distributed more equally, tend to overcome this issue of social discrepancy and ecological sustainability.

Many theoretical statements about the linkage of social inequality and ecological sustainability can be made. Still, when referring to the practice, it is evident that most people living in threshold countries are more exposed to environmental damages.

Economic-strong countries like the U.S cover themselves for losses in terms of natural disasters. On the contrary, threshold countries like Brazil or Mexico with a high occurrence of biodiversity cannot fight the risk of natural catastrophes due to limited resources, leading to a decrease in biodiversity.

As author Jerome Chave depicted in his results, an estimated inequality exponent shows how an increase of 1% in the Gini ratio is connected with a rise in the number of threatened species, a biodiversity loss. (Gregory M. Mikkelson & Andrew Gonzalez, 2007.)

Not forget here is with the increase in GDP, the land will be principally used, thus driving biodiversity loss. As the above-mentioned economic growth is currently the principal cause of increased climate change, leading to biodiversity losses.

Some authors tend to say that with the increase in income inequality, economic growth and Co2 emission depend more on each other.

Moreover, do underdeveloped countries strive for tools to access resources like water or energy, which might be ordinary for developed countries. The occurrences of ecological resources are naturally given for underdeveloped countries, however making use of it, is a significant challenge.

Developed countries with higher inequality do consume a lot more resources and generate more waste than threshold countries. As we can see in terms of income inequality, the rich tend to care less about the environmental component, which affects ecological sustainability negatively. Threshold countries tend to have higher biodiversity, but due to limited resources in protecting flora and fauna, making use of biodiversity is low.

Analog to the World Bank, alone in Sub-Saharan Africa, estimated costs of clean water run outreach 11 billion dollars (World Bank, 2012). Lack of resources is one of the main issues for countries with low GDP. According to Laurent and Raupach, developed economies utilize half of the global resources and still damage the environment by emitting 45% of greenhouse gas emissions (Laurent and Raupach, 2012&2007). On the contrary, the poorest, suffering from also a high inequality account for only 7% of CO2 emissions.

It cannot be ignored how a valuable continent with a high amount of natural resources contribute a significant part of decreasing GHG emission, by only accounting 4% (Laurent and Raupach, p.81, 2012&2007). However, another dimension of inequality will affect Africa negatively. Namely, the population will suffer water shortages caused by climate change (Laurent and Raupach, p.81, 2012&2007).

Inequality can be clustered in different aspects, such as income inequality or even gender inequality, which is also interlinked to ecological sustainability.

In a report from the World Bank concerning gender inequality, it is stated that women tend to outlive men by several years, leading to an increase in male mortality (World Bank, 2012). The mortality rate is related to risky behavior by men such as smoking and alcohol, which is causing environmental pollution and reducing an aspect of the human development index, in particular the life expectancy of men.

Developed countries do have the resources, but tend to care less about environmental sustainability; thus social discrepancies remain the same.

Threshold countries don’t have the skilled labor forces to embrace technological progresses by using and even protecting biodiversity, wherein potential job possibilities diminish, leading to higher inequality.

In my view, different types of inequality are linked to ecological sustainability, wherein, for instance, the more powerful countries or less powerful countries contribute their part.

Author Islam states that higher income inequality causes in many societies a higher aggregated level of pollution than in a community with equal distribution of income (S. Nazrul Islam, 2015).