Ultra-wealthy individuals are responsible for a disproportionate cost of climate harm, via their ownership investments in high-emitting activities alongside their carbon-intensive lifestyles, a new Greenpeace Africa report claims.

The report, Understanding the climate debt of extreme wealth, in a slight swerve from counties to individuals, highlights that in 2022, the investments of the world’s richest 0.01 per cent were associated with an estimated $992bn in what the report describes as climate debt (the monetised climate damages associated with emissions exceeding an “equitable share” of the remaining carbon budget consistent with a 1.5C pathway). By comparison, the report estimates the consumption-based climate debt of the same richest 0.01 per cent at $405bn.

Of course, such amalgamation of individuals allows no nuance as some will invest more sympathetically and consume less, so more, but the figures do point to a high concentration at the top of the global wealth distribution.

Some of the logic is rather obvious, that more concentration leads to more concentration, or that emissions linked to investment portfolios and capital holdings are considerably more concentrated among the wealthiest groups than consumption-based emissions, somewhat leading to questions of global regulation and politics rather than individual culpability. After all, nobody would want this to turn into a ‘bash the rich’ crusade, would they?

And indeed, Greenpeace International is calling on governments to integrate the polluter-pays principle into climate and fiscal policy frameworks and to commit under the UN Tax Convention (UNFCITC) to effective taxation of major corporate polluters, including through legally binding rules on taxing rights, transparency and measures to combat tax abuse.

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