Quantification of spatially differentiated resource footprints for products and services through a macro-economic and thermodynamic approach

Exergy analysis of natural resources embodied in China's interregional trade and its implication for regional imbalance

Large-scaled interregional trade is based upon massive exchanges of natural resources, leading to more environmental emissions and economic imbalance. China is the largest trade country in the world and has to face such challenges since different Chinese provinces are in different development stages with different resource endowments. By using the latest multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables and exergy accounting, this study aims to investigate natural resources and added values embodied in interregional trade in China for years of 2012, 2015, and 2017. Regional environmental inequality (REI) index and logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) were applied to measure the imbalance states and uncover corresponding driving factors. Results show that the total trade volumes in the middle Yellow River and eastern coastal regions were generally higher than those in other regions, together accounting for 41.50 ~ 41.78% of the total trade volume during the study period. The major flows of embodied natural resources shifted from the middle Yellow River region to western coastal, eastern coastal, and southern coastal regions. The northern coastal and eastern coastal regions were the major exporters of embodied added value. Less developed regions had higher REI values, indicating more environmental and economic losses than developed regions. Natural resources intensity was the major impact factor on the trade imbalances in most provinces. This study provides valuable insights for alleviating trade imbalance and promoting sustainable natural resources management based on cross-regional collaboration.

Attributing Global Land Carbon Loss to Regional Agricultural and Forestry Commodity Consumption

One of the critical components in climate change mitigation lies in meeting the challenge of reducing global land carbon loss, as human demand increases. Yet, it is unclear which region and which form of commodity consumption were responsible for the greatest loss of land carbon. Here we assumed a uniform lifespan (20-year) for managed land and took the managed land in 2010 as a reference to estimate the land carbon loss for region-commodity on a global scale. The estimates and multi-region input-output table were then combined to identify the regions and commodities that contributed the most to global land carbon loss from the consumption side. The results show that during the lifespan, global consumption for agricultural and forestry commodities excluding wood fuel lost a total of 15.6 Pg in land carbon annually, of which 29% and 25% were attributed to beef and wood consumption, respectively. Land carbon loss per capita consumption was highest in high-income regions (Australia, the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe) primarily due to the high consumed quantity for commodities per capita in these areas. Further, the net importers for land carbon were usually high-income regions (they held lower land carbon loss per unit of production), which was not conducive to reducing global land carbon loss. The research could contribute to discussions of climate responsibility and then inform climate mitigation policies.