International Trade Drives Global Resource Use: A Structural Decomposition Analysis of Raw Material Consumption from 1990–2010

Abstract

Globalization led to an immense increase of international trade and the emergence of complex global value chains. At the same time, global resource use and pressures on the environment are increasing steadily. With these two processes in parallel, the question arises whether trade contributes positively to resource efficiency, or to the contrary is further driving resource use? In this article, the socioeconomic driving forces of increasing global raw material consumption (RMC) are investigated to assess the role of changing trade relations, extended supply chains and increasing consumption. We apply a structural decomposition analysis of changes in RMC from 1990 to 2010, utilizing the Eora multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model. We find that changes in international trade patterns significantly contributed to an increase of global RMC. Wealthy developed countries play a major role in driving global RMC growth through changes in their trade structures, as they shifted production processes increasingly to less material-efficient input suppliers. Even the dramatic increase in material consumption in the emerging economies has not diminished the role of industrialized countries as drivers of global RMC growth.

A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights

“…Especially at the national level, this analysis commonly analyse how trajectories of material use relate to major phases of socioeconomic or political development, including incisive political events such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union (Krausmann et al 2016) or China's admittance to the World Trade Organisation (Velasco-Fernández et al 2015). At the country level, decomposition analyses (Muñoz and Hubacek 2008, Wenzlik et al 2015, Plank et al 2018 have identified economic growth (of absolute or per capita GDP and/or monetary final demand) as the most important driver of consumption-based measures of resource consumption. (Yu et al 2013) identified technological progress as the most important driver for China, while other drivers were found to have no significant impact on resource use (e.g.…”

The impacts of data deviations between MRIO models on material footprints: A comparison of EXIOBASE, Eora, and ICIO

“…In recent years, SDA has been widely applied to the case of environmental indicators, most notably to the issue of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (Lenzen, ). A few studies have also investigated the drivers for changes in MFs applying an SDA approach (Munoz & Hubacek, ; Plank, Eisenmenger, Schaffartzik, & Wiedenhofer, ; Wang et al., ; Weinzettel & Kovanda, ; Wenzlik, Eisenmenger, & Schaffartzik, ). In this paper, we do not use SDA to understand the drivers of change between two points in time, but assess the drivers of MF variations calculated by a pair of two GMRIO databases for the same year (see Owen et al., for a similar study on the carbon footprint).…”

Contributions of sociometabolic research to sustainability science

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