International Ecological Footprint Inequality: A Methodological Review and Some Results

Scarcities of environmental services are no longer merely a remote hypothesis. Consequently, analysis of their inequalities between nations becomes of paramount importance for the achievement of sustainability. This paper aims, on the one hand, at revising methodological aspects of the inequality measurement of certain environmental data and, on the other, at extending the scarce empirical evidence relating to the international distribution of Ecological Footprint (EF). Most of the techniques currently important in the literature are revised and then tested on EF data with interesting results. We consider the underlying properties of different inequality indices. Those indices which fit best with environmental inequality measurements are CV and GE(2) because of their neutrality property. Subgroup and Source decompositions are also discussed from a methodological perspective. Empirically, this paper contributes to the environmental inequality measurement of EF: this inequality has been quite stable. Subgroup decomposition by using exogenous country groups (World Bank classification) conclude that between group inequality explains almost the totality of international EF-inequality. Source decomposition warns of the dangers of confining CO emissions reduction to crop-based energies because of the implications for basic needs satisfaction.