Stone Visiting Scholar and Visiting Professor Lucas Chancel co-organized the Inequality and the Environment Symposium for Early-Career Researchers, held at Sciences Po on January 18, 2024. Stone Program Postdoctoral Fellow Shay O'Brien presented research at the conference. Chancel and O'Brien offer reflections on the conference below:
Lucas Chancel: "I consider this first Symposium for Early Career Researchers on Inequality and the Environment a great success, and we hope to organize many more editions. The symposium provided a space for early career researchers to present and discuss their work, receive feedback, and develop new research ideas. Fifteen to twenty years ago, the study of environmental inequalities was limited to a handful of scholars around the world - we had to count ourselves. The impressive number of doctoral and post-doctoral student paper proposals we received showed that this is no longer the case: the field is thriving.
The research presented focused on three main themes: inequality in the face of pollution, inequality in contributions to pollution, and inequality in capacities to respond to environmental policies. In recent years, significant progress has been made through the availability of better environmental data (such as satellite imagery) as well as interdisciplinary work. For example, better integration of climate science models with data on economic inequality is helping climate scientists better understand who is affected by pollution. Similarly, sociological studies of the determinants of consumption or investment decisions help economic inequality scholars better understand who pollutes and how. In turn, the asymmetry between who pollutes, who is affected by pollution, and who loses from green policies helps political scientists better understand the difficulties and conditions of building pro-environmental coalitions. In sum, the study of environmental inequalities is a new frontier for social science research, and further advances in this field will be immensely helpful as our societies grapple with climate change."
Shay O'Brien: "The conference gave me a crash course in cutting-edge research on the environment and inequality. I was so impressed by the range of methodological and theoretical approaches in the presentations, and I left inspired to more thoroughly integrate environmental concerns into my work on high-end wealth inequality – particularly when it comes to thinking about inequalities in the carbon footprint of capital ownership."