"In the fall of 2016 an environmental struggle in rural North Dakota made headlines worldwide. The local Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and climate activists were pitted against the corporate and government backers of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was being built to carry oil from the state's Bakken shale fields to a terminal in Illinois. Private security guards unleashed attack dogs on protesters, and the police blasted them with water cannons in freezing weather.
The tribe feared that a leak in the pipeline as it crossed under a reservoir along the Missouri River would contaminate its water supply. Climate activists joined the protest to fight ramped-up extraction of fossil fuels. Supporters of the $3.8-billion project argued that it would save the oil industry money, being less costly than the alternative of oil shipment by rail, and that its construction would bring jobs with multiplier effects to the local economy. Because the price of oil is set on world markets, the cost saving would not mean lower prices for consumers—but it would bring higher profits to producers.
By December 2016 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would deny approval for the pipeline crossing, a decision greeted with whoops of joy at the protesters' encampment. But four days after taking office in January, President Donald Trump overturned the ruling, and a few months later the oil began to flow."
Doesn't this sound like it comes from a leftist political magazine or Greenpeace website?
But no, this is not political at all – this is scientific. Indeed, it comes from the oldest continuously-published magazine in the United States, one which has published authors such as Albert Einstein. It’s not from Mother Jones or the Democratic National Committee. It’s from a distinctly non-political, and very well-respected journal, Scientific American.
In fact, the blue text above is the opening paragraph of an article written by University of Massachusetts, Amherst professor Dr. James K. Boyce.
The article’s title, How Economic Inequality Harms the Environment caught my eye.
After reading through the article, it further solidified the connection between this subject and the intersection of sustainability and Project Management. Let’s start with the connection to Phillip Crosby's concept - the Cost of Quality. As a PM we should be familiar with the concept. If not, check out the excellent short video below from ASQ (the American Society for Quality).
Let's get back to the environmental cost of inequality, and the article from Scientific American. Here’s the main point of the article:
When people who could benefit from using or abusing the environment are economically and politically more powerful than those who could be harmed, the imbalance facilitates environmental degradation. And the wider the inequality, the more the damage. Furthermore, those with less power end up bearing a disproportionate share of the environmental injury.
The author debates (with himself) the idea that as economies develop and economic conditions improve, the environmental degradation would decrease. He doubts this, however, after reflecting on his time in Bangladesh, living among some of the poorest people on earth, and comes up with the theory that “inequality, not per capita income, might underlie environmental degradation: the two seemed to rise and fall together”.
The author introduces the idea (of which I hadn’t heard before) of the EKC – the Environmental Kuznets Curve. This is a representation of environmental degradation plotted against economic improvement, and yields a U-shaped curve. See below for an example, and check the references at the bottom for great background in this concept.
Stay with People, Planet, Profits, and Projects for Part 2 of Cost of Inequality, in which we'll further connect this concept to project management and provide further research and wisdom from this intersection of economics, environment, and PM.
"Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around wondering about yourself."
