Consumption‐based Material Flow Accounting

In 2007, imports accounted for approximately 34% of the material input (domestic extraction and imports) into the Austrian economy and almost 60% of the GDP stemmed from exports. Upstream material inputs into the production of traded goods, however, are not yet included in the standard framework of material flow accounting (MFA). We have reviewed different approaches accounting for these upstream material inputs, or raw material equivalents (RME), positioning them in a wider debate about consumption‐based perspectives in environmental accounting. For the period 1995–2007, we calculated annual RME of Austria's trade and consumption applying a hybrid approach. For exports and competitive imports, we used an environmentally extended input‐output model of the Austrian economy, based on annual supply and use tables and MFA data. For noncompetitive imports, coefficients for upstream material inputs were extracted from life cycle inventories. The RME of Austria's imports and exports were approximately three times larger than the trade flows themselves. In 2007, Austria's raw material consumption was 30 million tonnes or 15% higher than its domestic material consumption. We discuss the material composition of these flows and their temporal dynamics. Our results demonstrate the need for a consumption‐based perspective in MFA to provide robust indicators for dematerialization and resource efficiency analysis of open economies.     

Economic Integration in Tanzania (1970–2011): A Biophysical Assessment

This article assesses the impact of economic integration on Tanzania's sociometabolic profile for the years 1970–2011, which witnessed an opening and further integration of Tanzania's economy through increased trade and foreign investment, through a time‐series economy‐wide material flows analysis (EW‐MFA). The EW‐MFA results show that contrary to the trade patterns of many developing countries, increased economic integration has resulted in Tanzania becoming a net importer of resources across all material categories when measured by the physical trade balance indicator. Additionally, the article discusses the conceptual and empirical challenges of measuring ecologically unequal exchange with EW‐MFAs for developing countries whose export profiles are dominated by lightweight, high‐value precious stones and metals. It also assesses the degree to which the Tanzanian economy has undergone dematerialization over the past 40 years of economic integration.     

Labor Embodied in Trade

Global production chains carry environmental and socioeconomic impacts embodied in each traded good and service. Even though labor and energy productivities tend to be higher for domestic production in high‐income countries than those in emerging economies, this difference is significantly reduced for consumption, when including imported products to satisfy national demand. The analysis of socioeconomic and environmental aspects embodied in consumption can shed a light on the real level of productivity of an economy, as well as the effects of rising imports and offshoring. This research introduces a consumption‐based metric for productivity, in which we evaluate the loss of productivity of developed nations resulting from imports from less‐developed economies and offshoring of labor‐intensive production. We measure the labor, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions footprints in the European Union's trade with the rest of the world through a multiregional input‐output model. We confirm that the labor footprint of European imports is significantly higher than the one of exports, mainly from low‐skilled, labor‐intensive primary sectors. A high share of labor embodied in exports is commonly associated with low energy productivities in domestic industries. Hence, this reconfirms that the offshoring of production to cheaper and low‐skilled, labor‐abundant countries offsets, or even reverts, energy efficiency gains and climate‐change mitigation actions in developed countries.     

Material Flows and Economic Growth in Developing China

The concept of sustainable development concerns not only the natural environment but also human societies and economies. The method of economy‐wide materials flow accounting and analysis (EW‐MFA) is internationally recognized as a valuable tool for studying the physical dimensions of economies. EW‐MFA has been carried out in many industrialized countries, but very little work has been done for developing China; this article can be regarded as one of the first attempts to study China's economy in terms of materials flows. In this article we have compiled materials flow accounts for China during the time series 1990 to 2002 and derived indicators associated with international comparison. Results show that the annual material consumption of China's economy continuously increased except for a slump around 1998, whereas the material efficiency exhibited a three‐phase trend reflecting different macropolicies of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Five‐Year Plans implemented by the central government. Based on this experience with EW‐MFA for China, suggestions for methodology development and further research are given for improving EW‐MFA as a more effective tool for environmental management.     

Hubs and Authorities in the World Trade Network Using a Weighted HITS Algorithm

We investigate the economic hubs and authorities of the world trade network (WTN) from to , an era of rapid economic globalization. Using a well-defined weighted hyperlink-induced topic search (HITS) algorithm, we can calculate the values of the weighted HITS hub and authority for each country in a conjugate way. In the context of the WTN, authority values are large for countries with significant imports from large hub countries, and hub values are large for countries with significant exports to high-authority countries. The United States was the largest economic authority in the WTN from to . The authority value of the United States has declined since , and China has now become the largest hub in the WTN. At the same time, China''s authority value has grown as China is transforming itself from the “factory of the world” to the “market of the world.” European countries show a tendency to trade mostly within the European Union, which has decreased Europe''s hub and authority values. Japan''s authority value has increased slowly, while its hub value has declined. These changes are consistent with Japan''s transition from being an export-driven economy in its high economic growth era in the latter half of the twentieth century to being a more mature, economically balanced nation.     

Resource Use in Small Island States

Iceland and Trinidad and Tobago are small open, high‐income island economies with very specific resource‐use patterns. This article presents a material flow analysis (MFA) for the two countries covering a time period of nearly five decades. Both countries have a narrow domestic resource base, their economy being largely based on the exploitation of one or two key resources for export production. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, the physical economy is dominated by oil and natural gas extraction and petrochemical industries, whereas Iceland's economy for centuries has been based on fisheries. More recently, abundant hydropower and geothermal heat were the basis for the establishment of large export‐oriented metal processing industries, which fully depend on imported raw materials and make use of domestic renewable electricity. Both countries are highly dependent on these natural resources and vulnerable to overexploitation and price developments. We show how the export‐oriented industries lead to high and growing levels of per capita material and energy use and carbon dioxide emissions resulting from large amounts of processing wastes and energy consumption in production processes. The example of small open economies with an industrial production system focused on few, but abundant, key resources and of comparatively low complexity provides interesting insights of how resource endowment paired with availability or absence of infrastructure and specific institutional arrangements drives domestic resource‐use patterns. This also contributes to a better understanding and interpretation of MFA indicators, such as domestic material consumption.     

Proteomics in Argentina ‐ limitations and future perspectives: A special emphasis on meat proteomics

Argentina is one of the most relevant countries in Latin America, playing a major role in regional economics, culture and science. Over the last 80 years, Argentinean history has been characterized by several upward and downward phases that had major consequences on the development of science in the country and most recently on proteomics. In this article, we characterize the evolution of Proteomics sciences in Argentina over the last decade and a half. We describe the proteomics publication output of the country in the framework of the regional and international contexts, demonstrating that Argentina is solidly anchored in a regional context, showing results similar to other emergent and Latin American countries, albeit still far from the European, American or Australian realities. We also provide a case‐study on the importance of Proteomics to a specific sector in the area of food science: the use of bacteria of technological interest, highlighting major achievements obtained by Argentinean proteomics scientists. Finally, we provide a general picture of the endeavors being undertaken by Argentinean Proteomics scientists and their international collaborators to promote the Proteomics‐based research with the new generation of scientists and PhD students in both Argentina and other countries in the Southern cone.     

Better Global Assessment of Worker Inequality: Comment on “The Employment Footprints of Nations”

This commentary responds to the previously published Journal of Industrial Ecology article “The Employment Footprints of Nations: Uncovering Master‐Servant Relationships” by Alsamawi and colleagues. Their article uses extended input‐output analysis to calculate employment and income footprints and, consequently, quantifies and provides an analysis of the average wages embodied in consumption of countries in comparison with the wages received by domestic workers. In effect, Alsamawi and colleagues show the extent of inequality in labor income, especially between developed and developing economies, traced throughout the global supply chains, but ignore the price differentials existing between countries in their discussion of the welfare implications of global trade on workers. This commentary contends the appropriateness of adjusting nominal compensation of workers to purchasing power parity (PPP) when undertaking global comparisons that pertain to well‐being and recalculates the employment footprints and income footprints of nations with PPP adjustment. The price adjustment in this work is intended to show a more accurate depiction of the disparity among workers of different nations when their labor incomes are deflated by the index price of consumption goods in their country. Using observations covering 189 countries and 14,839 sectors for the period 1990–2011, the results of the adjustment reveal that the ratio of domestic wages to foreign wages paid in support of a country's consumption (footprint wages) tends to be underestimated for labor‐exporting countries (developing economies with relatively cheaper consumption goods) and overestimated for labor‐importing countries (developed economies with more expensive consumption goods), thus demonstrating, generally, relatively less income inequality than previously exposed.     

The Physical Economy of the United States of America

The United States is not only the world's largest economy, but it is also one of the world's largest consumers of natural resources. The country, which is inhabited by some 5% of the world's population, uses roughly one‐fifth of the global primary energy supply and 15% of all extracted materials. This article explores long‐term trends and patterns of material use in the United States. Based on a material flow account (MFA) that is fully consistent with current standards of economy‐wide MFAs and covers domestic extraction, imports, and exports of materials for a 135‐year period, we investigated the evolution of the U.S. industrial metabolism. This process was characterized by an 18‐fold increase in material consumption, a multiplication of material use per capita, and a shift from renewable biomass toward mineral and fossil resources. In spite of considerable improvements in material intensity, no dematerialization has happened so far; in contrast to other high‐income countries, material use has not stabilized since the 1970s, but has continued to grow. This article compares patterns and trends of material use in the United States with those in Japan and the United Kingdom and discusses the factors underlying the disproportionately high level of U.S. per capita resource consumption.     

Castoff from the West,pearls in Kantamanto? A critique of second-hand clothes trade

African countries are today the major importers of the lowest grade of second-hand clothing (SHC). With the opening of global markets and the intense circulation of fast fashion in the Global North from the 1990s, the trade of SHC has exploded in the twenty-first century. The fast fashion business model, which fuels the SHC trade, has led to reduced quality of clothes, limited clothing lifetime, and accelerated discard of clothing, which end up as donations or become waste. The complexity of the international geographies of the SHC trade creates opacity and secrecy, maintaining inequalities and imbalances between Global North (GN) and South (GS), which continue a relationship of colonial dependence. This paper presents a critical look at SHC exchange in Kantamanto, the biggest SHC market in West Africa, situated within the central business district of Accra, Ghana. The paper scrutinizes the export of unwanted donated clothing, popularly known as “Obroni w'awu” (white man is dead), to Kantamanto. We use direct observation along with an interpretive research design through the analysis of photos taken from Kantamanto, and scholarly and gray literature. The paper documents local practices of reuse, exposing a duality: on the one hand, clothing's symbolic value that is lost in the GN is reconstituted in the GS through exchange and labor-creating local economies. On the other, the global trade of SHC has become synonymous with dumping, continuing a colonialist relationship between the GN and GS whereby the GN exports unwanted clothing to predominantly African countries’ landfills.     

The Metabolic Transition in Japan

The notion of a (socio‐) metabolic transition has been used to describe fundamental changes in socioeconomic energy and material use during industrialization. During the last century, Japan developed from a largely agrarian economy to one of the world's leading industrial nations. It is one of the few industrial countries that has experienced prolonged dematerialization and recently has adopted a rigorous resource policy. This article investigates changes in Japan's metabolism during industrialization on the basis of a material flow account for the period from 1878 to 2005. It presents annual data for material extraction, trade, and domestic consumption by major material group and explores the relations among population growth, economic development, and material (and energy) use. During the observed period, the size of Japan's metabolism grew by a factor of 40, and the share of mineral and fossil materials in domestic material consumption (DMC) grew to more than 90%. Much of the growth in the Japanese metabolism was based on imported materials and occurred in only 20 years after World War II (WWII), when Japan rapidly built up large stocks of built infrastructure, developed heavy industry, and adopted patterns of mass production and consumption. The surge in material use came to an abrupt halt with the first oil crisis, however. Material use stabilized, and the economy eventually began to dematerialize. Although gross domestic product (GDP) grew much faster than material use, improvements in material intensity are a relatively recent phenomenon. Japan emerges as a role model for the metabolic transition but is also exceptional in many ways.     

The Raw Material Equivalents of International Trade

This article aims at estimating the raw material equivalents (RMEs)—the upstream used material flows required along the production chain—of imports and exports for some Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Furthermore, the United States is included in the analysis as a reference for a high‐income economy. The RME concept and the empirical evidence are articulated by use of an input?output methodology. Results are set out for the year 2003 for each of the countries and in time series for the years 1977, 1986, 1996, and 2003 in the case of Chile. The findings show not only the physical dimensions behind direct material traded but also how the previous exporter (importer) position of a country (based on standard material flow analysis indicators) deteriorates, alleviates, or changes. Implications for material consumption indicators, such as direct material consumption (DMC) and raw material consumption (RMC), are also drawn. The results suggest basing the discussion of material flows on a broader set of indicators to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the implications of international trade and its impacts on the environment.     

Testing environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis: The role of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and trade in OECD countries

This paper investigates the causal relationships between per capita CO₂ emissions, gross domestic product (GDP), renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, and international trade for a panel of 25 OECD countries over the period 1980–2010. Short-run Granger causality tests show the existence of bidirectional causality between: renewable energy consumption and imports, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy and trade (exports or imports); and unidirectional causality running from: exports to renewable energy, trade to CO₂ emissions, output to renewable energy. There are also long-run bidirectional causalities between all our considered variables. Our long-run fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) estimates show that the inverted U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is verified for this sample of OECD countries. They also show that increasing non-renewable energy increases CO₂ emissions. Interestingly, increasing trade or renewable energy reduces CO₂ emissions. According to these results, more trade and more use of renewable energy are efficient strategies to combat global warming in these countries.     

Materials Flows in Finland: Resource Use in a Small Open Economy

In this article, the development of natural resource use in Finland during the period 1970-1997 is analyzed. In measuring natural resource use, the concept of total material requirement (TMR) is applied. The focus is on the linkages of resource use with the changing structures of the economy. The linkages are studied using input-output analysis.
Using input-output analysis, the TMR is further partitioned into resources used for domestic final use or for total material consumption (TMC) and total material requirement of exports (TME). The analysis shows that TMR has the problem of double accounting: if the TMRs of all countries of the world are summed, then international trade would be accounted for twice in the world TMR, once in imports and once in exports of each country.
The TMC concept does not have this kind of defect. In a small, open economy like that of Finland, where the share of foreign trade is large, the difference between the TMR and the TMC is also large. We show that by 1997, the TME comprised about half of Finland's TMR and that the growth of the TMR over the study period has been due to the TME only as the TMC has stayed rather constant.     

Biotechnology: developing countries and globalization

Biotechnology in a globalizing economy involves the participation of all countries–industrialized, developing and least developed, in the interconnected web of trade liberalization in closed and open-market economies. The various geopolitical or geocultural regions show striking approaches to the application of biotechnologies for development and the safeguarding of intellectual property rights. The generally held view that developing countries are doomed to being marginalized in a globalizing economy is, seemingly, in need of revision.     

Chronological change of resource metabolism and decarbonization patterns in Pakistan: Perspectives from a typical developing country

With economic growth in many developing countries, not all are making similar progress with regard to material and environmental efficiencies. This study examines material use and CO₂ emission patterns and intensities from 1971 to 2015 in a typical developing country, Pakistan, and investigates national‐level and multi‐country‐level efficiency improvements using data envelopment analysis. The results are used to derive key policy insights for a sustainable economic transition with higher resource and carbon efficiencies. Results show that material intensity has reduced by 39.1% while CO₂ intensity has risen by 21.5% in the country. Pakistan, when compared with its top 10 export countries, was relatively more material and CO₂ intensive. National‐level efficiency was found to be low in most of the periods due to material/energy intensive agriculture and industries, low value‐added exports, etc. Insights from the national‐level efficiency analysis indicate that surging CO₂ intensities have started to decline since 2010 and the economy has greatly stabilized. Multi‐country analysis revealed that the efficiency gap between Pakistan and its developed export countries (such as the United Kingdom and France) has widened during the study period. Insights from the multi‐country analysis suggest that the economic growth and industrialization improves material and environmental efficiencies to some extent, yet these improvements are not equally distributed among all countries. As a way forward, integrated policies on sustainable resource consumption, carbon mitigation, and economic growth are necessary for accruing higher benefits from rising global trade and resource connectedness.     

The energy embodied in the first and second industrial revolutions

Understanding the nature of energy embodied in economies is essential to assessing their potential to grow or transform sustainably. As the first country to undergo industrialization, study of the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution is particularly important for understanding transformational processes. Historical accounts describe how exploitation of Britain's coal reserves supported the evolution of steel production, railways, and other industries; yet reconstructions of the UK's eighteenth/nineteenth century economy have found relatively small contributions from coal mining to economic growth. Here, economic input‐output models for 1841 and 1907 are used to calculate the coal embodied in capital investment, consumption, and exports. Most of the coal was embodied in consumption in 1841, with coal embodied in exports growing particularly fast by 1907. The coal embodied in capital was smaller, but the energy intensity of investment was about four times larger than the energy intensity of consumption. The coal embodied in building the capital stock, much of it used for production of materials such as iron, steel, and bricks, was important for economic growth and transformation. Using historical proxy data, it is estimated that ～1.1 billion imperial tons of coal (34,000 PJ) were used to build the UK's capital assets between 1760 and 1913. The conceptual model developed here helps to explain the role of energy in economic growth and is important to contemporary sustainable development. This article met the requirements for a gold – gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges .     

低碳经济计量模式

首先对"低碳经济"进行了讨论,进而提出了"碳循环经济"概念;对现有碳计量进行研究,提出了相应改进计算公式:碳绩效和碳经济密度。最后,对碳责任分担进行了探讨,提出了发达国家和发展中国家"责任共担、区别对待"的碳责任担负的计算模式。     

Measuring Sustainability Efficiency Using a Two‐Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

In this article, we apply an additive two‐stage data envelopment analysis estimator on a panel of 20 countries with advanced economies for the time period 1990–2011 in order to create a composite sustainability efficiency index. We use a window‐based approach in order to study the countries over the years. The sustainability efficiency index is decomposed into production efficiency and eco‐efficiency indicators. The results reveal inequalities among the examined countries between the two stages. The eco‐efficiency stage is characterized by large inequalities among countries and significantly lower efficiency scores than the overall sustainability efficiency and the production efficiency. Finally, it is reported that a country's high production efficiency level does not ensure a high eco‐efficiency performance.     

A Metabolic Profile of Peru: An Application of Multi‐Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) to the Mining Sector's Exosomatic Energy Flows

The present Peru's metabolic profile study poses the specific question, What are the long‐term national energy system implications of the recent government‐supported growth of the mining sector? The question is addressed by analyzing interactions between human economic activity (in hours) and electricity input flows (in joules) in the mining sector of the Peruvian economy in 2000 and 2010, with a projection for 2020. The methodology is based on the multi‐scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM), which is an application of Georgescu‐Roegen's bioeconomics approach. Empirical results found for the national economy show: (1) the massive increase in size of the energy system, which is explained by exploitation of the Camisea natural gas (NG) reserves, and (2) the potential for establishing a carbon lock‐in in the electricity sector, owing to increasing construction of electricity plants based on NG as their primary energy source. Empirical results specific to the mining sector indicate: (1) the extremely high electricity metabolic rate of the mining sector (61.6 megajoules per hour in 2010), which was found to be 11 times the rate of electricity used per hour of human activity in the building and manufacturing sector in Peru, and (b) the potential increases in the proportion of electricity used in the mining sector (flow share), which could jeopardize the availability of high‐quality primary energy supplies for the rest of society. In light of these implications, it is argued that the Peruvian government's strong support for growth of the mining sector may have to be reconsidered.