Environmental-social-economic footprints of consumption and trade in the Asia-Pacific region

Abstract

Asia-Pacific (APAC) has been the world’s most dynamic emerging area of economic development and trade in recent decades. Here, we reveal the significant and imbalanced environmental and socio-economic effects of the region’s growths during 1995–2015. Owing to the intra-regional trade of goods and services, APAC economies grew increasingly interdependent in each other’s water and energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) and PM2.5 emissions, and labor and economic productivity, while the environmental and economic disparity widened within the region. Furthermore, our results highlight APAC’s significant role in globalization. By 2015, APAC was engaged in 50–71% of the virtual flows of water, energy, GHG, PM2.5, labor, and value added embodied in international trade. While the region’s final demand and trade grew less resource- and emissions-intensive, predominantly led by China’s transformations, APAC still lags behind global averages after two decades. More joint efforts of APAC economies and attention to sustainable transformation are needed.

The environmental impact of industrialization and foreign direct investment: empirical evidence from Asia-Pacific region

“…Almost half of the world's natural disasters occurred in the Asia-Pacific in 2018 which affect 42 billion peoples in the region. Moreover, when world is leading towards poverty alleviation, Asia-Pacific region is facing high-income inequality with the rise in the GINI coefficient from 0.34 to 0.38 during 1994-2014 (Yang et al 2020). Therefore, to achieve the 2030 Agenda for SDGs, it is necessary to address the social economic and environmental gaps in the Asia-Pacific region.…”

COVID ‐19 pandemic facilitating energy transition opportunities

“…As the final judgement should be quantified by GHG, Energy and the other environmental footprints 24 it becomes more and more obvious that a decisive issue will be how green (ie, with minimum environmental footprints) the electrical power is going to be. The future research should follow several avenues: novel opportunities continuously arising as a response to the new demands, energy efficiency and savings as well as reducing and minimising the environmental burden created by electrical power generation, transmission and distribution.…”

Spatial pattern of the ecological environment in Yunnan Province

“…Research on the ecological environment primarily focuses on analyses of the water environment, atmospheric environment, soil environment, engineering technology, environmental protection technology, policy guidance, and industry technical guidance and determining solutions to typical regional ecological environment issues [1]. Many research methods were developed for ecological environments, including correlation analyses [2], environmental quality evaluations [3][4][5][6][7], comprehensive evaluation methods [8], fuzzy rule-based systems [9], neural network and gray models [10][11][12], analytic hierarchy processes [13], remote-sensing ecological indexes [14], GIS raster analysis [15], cellular automata [16], Google Earth Engine [17], geodetectors [18], and cellular automata [19]. High-tech methods, such as remote sensing, geographic information systems and global positioning systems, were used in ecological environmental evaluations and played a significant role.…”