The dual role of inequality for sustainability

The inherently unsustainable environmental impacts of our global society are impressively exemplified by anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity loss, and natural resource depletion. Local hotspots of causes and effects of these environmental impacts demonstrate that humanity at large is not a suitable analytical category for understanding these developments, even if the Anthropocene may be interpreted to that effect. Instead, strong links can be identified between inequality along its environmental, social, and economic dimensions and sustainability. The research project Cause and effect The dual role of inequality for sustainability is dedicated to understanding these links. Spanning the global to the national and local level, this project investigates the systematic links between inequality and sustainability, i.e., the environmental impacts of societal resource use. The conceptual framework that provides the theoretical underpinning for this research considers both the environmental consequences of inequality and the role that the environmental impact of resource use patterns plays in explaining inequality. Inequality and sustainability are multi-directionally linked across levels of scale, as exemplified by the international fragmentation of production and consumption and the associated resource extraction, use, and environmental impact. The project explicitly considers such multi-scalar links. On the basis of the conceptual framework, a database is developed covering environmental, social, and economic inequality, resource use, and environmental impacts at the national level for 150-200 countries in the long- term. This database will be exploited in quantitative analyses of the links between inequality and sustainability at the global and the national level. For a selection of case study countries, additional subnational and qualitative data will be considered in more fine-grained analyses. On the basis of the conceptual framework and the empirical work, possibilities will be identified for interventions which simultaneously address inequality and sustainability. The results of this project contribute to better understanding of the mutual links between societal organization and resource use. This is a prerequisite to successful transformation towards greater sustainability. The project is relevant to ongoing sustainability research as well as to the broader public discourse on sustainability.