Globalization has led to an increasing geospatial separation of production and consumption, and, as a consequence, to an unprecedented displacement of environmental and social impacts through international trade. A large proportion of total global impacts can be associated with trade, and the trend is rising. Advances in global multi-region input-output models have allowed researchers to draw detailed, international supply-chain connections between harmful production in social and environmental hotspots and affluent consumption in global centres of wealth. The general direction of impact displacement is from developed to developing countries—an increase of health impacts in China from air pollution linked to export production for the United States being one prominent example. The relocation of production across countries counteracts national mitigation policies and may negate ostensible achievements in decoupling impacts from economic growth. A comprehensive implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals therefore requires the inclusion of footprint indicators to avoid loopholes in national sustainability assessments. Indicators of environmental and social footprints of international trade must inform assessments of progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, suggests a synthesis of studies on the geospatial separation of consumption and production.

Environmental and social footprints of international trade

Input-output and structural decomposition analysis of India’s carbon emissions and intensity, 2007/08 – 2013/14

Carbon emissions and their drivers for a typical urban economy from multiple perspectives: A case analysis for Beijing city

Carbon abatement in China's commercial building sector: A bottom-up measurement model based on Kaya-LMDI methods

Do commercial building sector-derived carbon emissions decouple from the economic growth in Tertiary Industry? A case study of four municipalities in China.

L. Zeng

Papers

Global energy flows embodied in international trade: A combination of environmentally extended input–output analysis and complex network analysis