Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Aug 20;783:146992. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146992. Epub 2021 Apr 14.
The trade-off between economic growth and environmental conservation is the focus of national environmental management. Previous studies have proved that global trade can bring both economic benefits and environmental costs to all countries. However, for different countries, it is not clear whether the environmental costs match their economic benefits in global trade. Also, whether the global trade exacerbates or mitigates the uneven distribution of natural resources among countries need to be further investigated. This study aims to fill these research gaps by providing evidence of global environmental inequality from land and water perspective, thus inspire new thinking on the optimization of global trade patterns. We construct an environmental inequality index based on the world Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model, and perform a case study for land and water. Results show that most of countries with low per capita land resources are net importers of embodied land, while many countries with extreme water shortages are net exporters of virtual water, such as India, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, indicating that the global trade encourages the optimal distribution of land resources but exacerbates the uneven distribution of water resources. The environmental cost of developed countries is much lower than that of developing countries compared to their economic gains from global trade, and the inequality of virtual water trade is higher than that of embodied land trade. High-income countries mainly export high value-added products with low environmental costs, while developing countries are just the opposite. We suggest that due to the lack of a unified global natural resource market, resource tax may be an effective means to reduce global environmental inequality and resource mismatch, and policies aimed at reducing environmental inequality can help achieve coordinated management of land and water resources.
经济增长与环境保护的权衡是国家环境管理的重点。以往的研究已经证明，全球贸易可以给所有国家带来经济效益和环境成本。然而，对于不同的国家来说，全球贸易带来的环境成本是否与其经济效益相匹配尚不清楚。此外，全球贸易是否加剧或缓解了国家间自然资源分布的不均衡，也需要进一步研究。本研究旨在通过从土地和水资源的角度提供全球环境不平等的证据，填补这些研究空白，从而为优化全球贸易模式提供新的思路。我们基于世界多区域投入产出（MRIO）模型构建了一个环境不平等指数，并进行了土地和水资源的案例研究。结果表明，人均土地资源较低的大多数国家都是土地资源的净进口国，而许多水资源极度短缺的国家都是虚拟水的净出口国，如印度、巴基斯坦、伊朗和埃及，这表明全球贸易促进了土地资源的优化配置，但加剧了水资源分布的不均衡。与全球贸易带来的经济收益相比，发达国家的环境成本要比发展中国家低得多，虚拟水贸易的不平等程度高于土地资源贸易。高收入国家主要出口环境成本低、附加值高的产品，而发展中国家则正好相反。我们建议，由于缺乏统一的全球自然资源市场，资源税可能是减少全球环境不平等和资源错配的有效手段，而旨在减少环境不平等的政策有助于实现土地和水资源的协调管理。
