Betweenness-Based Method to Identify Critical Transmission Sectors for Supply Chain Environmental Pressure Mitigation

To develop industry-specific policies for mitigating environmental pressures, previous studies primarily focus on identifying sectors that directly generate large amounts of environmental pressures (a.k.a. production-based method) or indirectly drive large amounts of environmental pressures through supply chains (e.g., consumption-based method). In addition to those sectors as important environmental pressure producers or drivers, there exist sectors that are also important to environmental pressure mitigation as transmission centers. Economy-wide environmental pressure mitigation might be achieved by improving production efficiency of these key transmission sectors, that is, using less upstream inputs to produce unitary output. We develop a betweenness-based method to measure the importance of transmission sectors, borrowing the betweenness concept from network analysis. We quantify the betweenness of sectors by examining supply chain paths extracted from structural path analysis that pass through a particular sector. We take China as an example and find that those critical transmission sectors identified by betweenness-based method are not always identifiable by existing methods. This indicates that betweenness-based method can provide additional insights that cannot be obtained with existing methods on the roles individual sectors play in generating economy-wide environmental pressures. Betweenness-based method proposed here can therefore complement existing methods for guiding sector-level environmental pressure mitigation strategies

sj-docx-1-jht-10.1177_10963480221148189 – Supplemental material for Does Tourism Growth Influence Destination Residents’ Welfare in China? The Mediating Effect of Cuisine Diversity

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jht-10.1177_10963480221148189 for Does Tourism Growth Influence Destination Residents’ Welfare in China? The Mediating Effect of Cuisine Diversity by Sai Liang, Jing Ma, Yang Yang and Danmeng Wu in Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research</p

Atmospheric Mercury Footprints of Nations

The Minamata Convention was established to protect humans and the natural environment from the adverse effects of mercury emissions. A cogent assessment of mercury emissions is required to help implement the Minamata Convention. Here, we use an environmentally extended multi-regional input–output model to calculate atmospheric mercury footprints of nations based on upstream production (meaning direct emissions from the production activities of a nation), downstream production (meaning both direct and indirect emissions caused by the production activities of a nation), and consumption (meaning both direct and indirect emissions caused by final consumption of goods and services in a nation). Results show that nations function differently within global supply chains. Developed nations usually have larger consumption-based emissions than up- and downstream production-based emissions. India, South Korea, and Taiwan have larger downstream production-based emissions than their upstream production- and consumption-based emissions. Developed nations (e.g., United States, Japan, and Germany) are in part responsible for mercury emissions of developing nations (e.g., China, India, and Indonesia). Our findings indicate that global mercury abatement should focus on multiple stages of global supply chains. We propose three initiatives for global mercury abatement, comprising the establishment of mercury control technologies of upstream producers, productivity improvement of downstream producers, and behavior optimization of final consumers

Unintended Environmental Consequences and Co-benefits of Economic Restructuring

Current economic restructuring policies have ignored unintended environmental consequences and cobenefits, the understanding of which can provide foundations for effective policy decisions for green economy transformation. Using the input-output life cycle assessment model and taking China as an example, we find that household consumption, fixed capital formation, and export are main drivers to China’s environmental impacts. At the product scale, major contributors to environmental impacts vary across different types of impacts. Stimulating the development of seven strategic emerging industries will cause unintended consequences, such as increasing nonferrous metal ore usage, terrestrial acidification, photochemical oxidant formation, human toxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Limiting the surplus outputs in the construction materials industry and metallurgy industry may only help mitigate some of the environmental impacts caused by China’s regulated pollutants, with little effect on reducing other impacts, such as marine eutrophication, terrestrial acidification, photochemical oxidant formation, and particulate matter formation. However, it will bring cobenefits by simultaneously reducing mineral ore usage, human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Sustainable materials management and integrated policy modeling are possible ways for policy-making to avoid unintended consequences and effectively utilize cobenefits

figshare file 1

The binary matrix merging 149 sectors into 49 sectors

figshare file 5

The 51 sectors in the Chinese economy

Inputs and outputs for forecasting the load at 1:00 from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, 2004, for Zone 1 (in binary format).

<p>The top of the figure denotes the category of the input/output of the model: Xa denotes the calendar information (year, month, holiday, and weekday), Xb denotes the temperature, Xc denotes the historical temperature, Xd denotes the historical load, and Y denotes the output.</p

figshare file 4

The binary matrix merging 149 sectors into 91 sectors

Parameters in CNN modelling.

<p>Parameters in CNN modelling.</p

Socioeconomic Drivers of Mercury Emissions in China from 1992 to 2007

Mercury emissions in China have increased by 164% during 1992–2007. While major mercury producers were among energy combustion and nonferrous metal sectors, little is known for the socioeconomic factors driving the growth of emissions. In this paper we examine the underlying drivers and their contributions to the change of mercury emissions. Results show that changes in per capita GDP and GDP composition led to increased emissions which offset the reduction of emissions made possible by technology-induced decrease of mercury emissions intensity and changes in final demand mix. In particular, changes in final demand mix caused decreasing mercury emissions from 1992 to 2002 and increasing emissions from 2002 to 2007. Formation of fixed capital was the dominant driver behind the increase of mercury emissions, followed by the increasing urban population and net exports. This systems-based examination of socioeconomic drivers for China’s mercury emission increase is critical for emission control by guiding policy-making and targets of technology development