It’s a well-known fact that rich countries pollute more than poor countries. What is less taken in account is that it is within countries and especially inside emerging countries that inequalities in terms of pollution are increasingly significant. The middle classes, in India, China or Latin America, are beginning to pollute just as much as the western middle classes. What policies should be put in place to reverse the trend?

Answers by Lucas Chancel">Lucas Chancel, Associate Professor of Economics at Sciences Po's Center for Research on Social Inequalities  and affilited to the Department of Economics. Lucas Chancel is also Co-Director of the World Inequality Lab"> World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics and Senior advisor at the European Tax Observatory.  

Additional Resources

• Lucas Chancel, Philipp, Bothe, Tancrède Voituriez -  Climate Inequality Report 2023">Climate Inequality Report 2023, World Inequality Lab Study 2023


• Lucas Chancel - Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019">Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019. Nat Sustain, November 2022 


• Gregor Semieniuk, Lucas Chancel, Eulalie Saïsset, Philip B. Holden, Jean-Francois Mercure, Neil R. Edwards - Potential pension fund losses should not deter high-income countries from bold climate action">Potential pension fund losses should not deter high-income countries from bold climate action, Joule, Issue 7, 2023

Recorded on 30th May, 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series, accompanied by Anaëlle VERGONJEANNE. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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