ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that inequality may even be considered one of the most critical factors to activate or intensify the other causes of unsustainability. It shows that although there are many apparent causes behind unsustainable development presented by various scholars and experts, it is the severe forms of inequality prevalent in societies and global structures that constitute the most critical challenge to sustainability. It is possible to interpret the structures of inequality as "the cause of causes" behind the prevalent problems of unsustainable development. There is a widely discussed argument that environmental unsustainability is worsened by the excessive level of consumption, which is "central to the environmental crisis". The chapter explains why the structures of severe inequality represent a more central cause behind this unsustainability and how the detrimental impacts of the preceding causal factors themselves are reinforced by such inequalities.
