World's highest-consuming 10% cause up to $5.7 trillion in environmental damage a year
A new study by researchers at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and Leiden University, published in Communications Sustainability, estimates environmental damage at $1.7 to $5.7 trillion a year, and finds biodiversity loss, not climate change, is its largest single component.
At the central and upper estimates this is several times more than the international community has committed to spend on climate action and biodiversity conservation combined, and is on the scale of the funding estimated to be needed globally to address these crises.
This finding puts a price on the harm this group inflicts across four planetary boundaries: climate change, biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution, and freshwater use.
The average annual damage bill for a person in the global top 10% is $2,300 to $7,500. In the United States, where per-person impacts are highest, the figure rises to $19,000 to $63,000 - equivalent to 6–20% of their income or 0.8–3% of their wealth. More than 60% of the global top 10% live in the US and EU. In the EU 40-45% of the population falls within this highest consuming group, and in the US it is over half the population.
Biodiversity loss is the single largest contributor to the global damage bill, accounting for 47–56% of the total. Climate change accounts for 36–45%. The finding underlines recent calls to tackle biodiversity and climate crises together rather than treating them as separate policy challenges.
The figures are likely conservative. For the highest-income individuals, roughly half of emissions come from investments rather than personal consumption, impacts not captured in this analysis.
“These damages are real costs being borne somewhere. They are borne by ecosystems, by communities exposed to drought and pollution, and by people least able to insulate themselves from a destabilising environment. At $1.7 to $5.7 trillion a year they are on the scale of the international financing gaps for climate and biodiversity combined, and they almost certainly understate the true picture: we cover only direct consumption and four of the nine planetary boundaries”
The scale of the damage bill illustrates the potential revenue if polluter-pays principles were applied to high-consuming groups. The researchers note that environmental taxation focused on luxury consumption rather than basic goods tends to be more progressive and more effective at reducing emissions, though they stress that pricing is one tool among several and does not justify or compensate for the damage itself.
The study combines consumption-based environmental footprints with prices from the Environmental Prices Handbook 2024 to estimate the monetary cost of damage across the four planetary boundaries. The underlying consumption data is from 2017, the most recent year for which globally comparable footprints are available.
The authors emphasise that monetising environmental damage does not equate to commodifying nature, and that monetary figures capture only part of what ecosystems are worth.
Read the full study: 'Environmental damages of the top ten percent consumers exceed global climate and biodiversity funding gaps'.
