The world's top 10% of consumers, many of them living in the United States and the European Union, cause environmental and climate damage worth trillions of dollars each year, according to a new study.
Researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands and the University of Oxford in England put the annual damage at between $1.7 trillion and $5.7 trillion in a study published in the journal Communications Sustainability.
The researchers said the findings showed that those responsible should be held more accountable.
Lead author Inge Schrijver of Leiden University said that while putting a price on the environment was uncomfortable because the true value of nature could not be measured, monetary figures helped show the scale of the damage and the responsibility of the highest-spending 10%.
She said the estimated damage was higher than the amount needed worldwide for climate and biodiversity funding.
The study looked only at the impact of consumption on selected planetary boundaries, or environmental limits.
According to the calculations, almost half of the damage - 47% to 56% - is linked to biodiversity loss. Climate change follows in second place, accounting for 36% to 45%.
The effects of nitrogen enrichment account for 6% to 8%, while phosphorus enrichment and freshwater impacts each make up less than 2%, the researchers said.
The team stressed that the highest-spending 10% of people are distributed very unevenly around the world. About 60% live in the United States and the European Union, while only around 2% live in India.
On average, the highest-spending 10% of the global population cause environmental costs of $2,300 to $7,500 per person per year, according to the study.
But the researchers said the regional differences were huge.
In the US, the annual damage caused by the highest-spending 10% ranges from $19,000 to $63,000 per person, with an average of about $38,000.
In India, the damage caused by the highest-spending 10% is between $410 and $1,400 per person per year. In Germany, the annual average for each person in the highest-spending 10% is just under $10,000.
Co-author Paul Behrens of the University of Oxford said the top 10% of spenders mattered not only because they caused the most damage, but also because they had the greatest influence in reducing it.
Their investments helped determine which industries expanded, he said, while their lifestyles also helped define what was seen as normal in society.
The team calculated the cost of the environmental footprint using 2017 data and the Environmental Prices Handbook, a reference manual for putting a monetary value on environmental damage.
The wide range in the figures reflects uncertainty in the estimates, particularly around the cost of biodiversity loss.
The calculations cover only the cost of consumption. The impact of financial investments, for example, was not included.
The researchers called for stronger regulation to protect the environment and for those responsible for the damage to be held more accountable, for example through an environmental tax or a form of wealth tax.
