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1 % of the of the world's wealth, i.e.,
3,500 million people own US$ 2.3 trillion
.
3
On average, each of the individuals belonging to the poorest 50 % of the world
population owns US$ 657. Noticeably, the total amount owned by the bottom half
of the world's population is the same as the amount owned by the richest 85 people
in the world. On average, each of the 85 world's richest persons owns the same
amount as owned by 41,176,471 people who belong to the bottom half the popula-
tion (Table
9.3
).
In summary, the data reported by the World Economic Forum (
2013
), Credit
Suisse (
2013
), UNICEF (Ortiz and Cummins
2011
), and the United Nations
University and the World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-
WIDER, Davies et al.
2007
) show that just 0.000001 % of the world population
owns the same amount of the world's wealth as 50 % of the world's population.
Given this extreme concentration of wealth, the responsibility in terms of human
consumption and impact cannot be presented in general terms of the human species
Homo sapiens
or
Humanity
in general. However, most publications analyze the
problem in these terms. For instance, in the review article “Humanity's unsustain-
able environmental footprint” published by Hoekstra and Wiedmann (
2014
) in
Science
magazine, the authors conclude that:
the various components of the environmental footprint of
humanity
must be reduced to
remain within planetary boundaries. (Hoekstra and Wiedmann
2014
, p. 1117; emphasis
added)
Given the marked wealth gaps, it is technically misleading and ethically unjust
to continue analyzing current challenges in terms of
humanity
in general, without
defi ning differential responsibilities (Box
9.1
). As philosopher and economist
Amartya Sen (
1997
) has critically observed, the 1 % of the world's population is
richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political and economic
systems. The widening gap between the rich and non-rich has rapidly grown dur-
ing the post-war Great Acceleration, and today we have reached a state of
plu-
tonomy
where the majority of the wealth is controlled by an ever-shrinking
minority, dividing humanity in two blocks: “the plutonomies, where economic
growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest”
(Kapur et al.
2005
, p. 1).
The economic growth of a plutonomic society becomes dependent on the fortunes
of a wealthy minority (Box
9.1
). However, as Canadian writer and politician
Christine Freeland (
2011
) cautions, we are not merely living in a plutonomy, but a
plutocracy, a form of oligarchy. The wealthy display “outsized political infl uence,
narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their
3
A similar fi gure is provided by Credit Suisse (
2013
), which reports a global wealth of $240.8 tril-
lion. Share of wealth for the richest 1 % is 46 % (amounting to $110 trillion), and for the bottom
half of the population is 0.71 % (amounting to $1.7 trillion). The United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF, Ortiz and Cummins
2011
, p. 12), and the United Nations University - World Institute
for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER, Davies et al.
2007
), offer complementary
analyses whose global percentages are similar regarding wealth gaps at global scale.
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