The Resource Economics of Environmental Absorption Capacity

This paper uses an economic framework to investigate the depletion of heavy metal absorption capacity of soil. Specifically, the Hotelling model for the allocation of exhaustible resources across time is applied to Cadium deposition onto agricultural soil in the Rhine basin. The Hotelling model requires a knowledge of the resource as well as the demand function for the resource. The resource of absorption capacity is limited because above a certain Cd concentration in soil agriculture is not allowed; accumulation of Cd above this maximum acceptable soil concentration is not allowed. The demand function for absorption capacity corresponds to the cost function of avoiding deposition of heavy metals. According to the Hotelling model calculations, 0.2 DM should be spent to avoid the deposition of 1 kg Cd at a discount rate of 5% and 600 DM at 1 %. The optimal level of Cd control expenditure increases at the discount rate. The paper also presents a modified Hotelling model that takes the replenishment of the resource by removal of heavy metals from the soil (leaching and plant uptake) into account. Using a simple donor-controlled outflow model of Cd behavior in soil and a residence time of 1000 years, the optimal initial expenditure level for Cd control in the Rhine basin is determined to be 0.0006 DM/kg (3% discount rate). For the Katowice district, the optimal level is 20 DM/kg. A net input of Cd into the soil of the Rhine basin is allowed for 400 years in the Rhine basin and for 200 years in Katowice. This paper finds the modified Hotelling model to be a useful heuristic for understanding the time dimension of absorption capacity; specific recommendations cannot be derived, however, because they depend on tenuous inputs such as the cost curve for pollution control, the discount rate, and the maximum acceptable soil concentration

The Environmental Impacts of Consumption: Research Methods and Driving Forces

The aim of this study is to develop an operational method to determine the direct and indirect environmental impacts of Austrian household's consumption pattern and to apply this method together with social research methods to evaluate the household's consumption pattern of two different settlements. The operational method is set up on the Household Environmental Impact (HEI) assessment based on household interviews, and without conducting a full consumer expenditure survey. The empirical research is designed as a case-control study of the car-free settlement in Vienna and aims to evaluate how the consumption patterns of the inhabitants differ from a 'control group', what that impact has on the environment taking the income (or 'rebound') effect into account, and how the attitudes and social determinants of behavior differ between the two groups. The environmental profile of the household is calculated by using consumer expenditure surveys, information from the national accounting tables (with environmental accounts), from product life cycle assessment, and data from the conducted survey. Survey research on the motivations, preferences, and social factors is used to evaluate the driving forces and social dynamics that determine the environmental profiles of the selected households. Residents in the car-free settlement have changed their daily mobility routines for good. Daily mobility needs are covered by public transport and bicycle. The high importance of the issue "car-use" in the car-free settlement, the fact that car mobility is still a very important topic in the settlement, and the environmentally conscious micro-culture in the car-free settlement contributes to the stabilization of the car-free habit of the tenants. Due to that only people with low car mileage state adequate attitudes, and do have much more car-free friends. Whereas the extremely low car traffic in the car-free settlement could only be partly explained by settlement attributes, there is no empirical indication to explain air traffic. The results show that car-free households have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use, their CO2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50% of those of the reference settlement. The car-free households have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport, nutrition, and 'other' consumption, reflecting the slightly higher income per-capita. As a result, the CO2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement. The research is designed to lay the foundation for policy making through providing tools to determine the environmental impacts of consumption, as well as insight into alternative consumption patterns and factors that shape those patterns

Scarcity-weighted global land and metal footprints

Resource scarcity poses an increasing threat to the supply security of modern economies. Some grand challenges ahead are the limits to agricultural expansion and the geologic scarcity of metals. To better understand the drivers behind land and metal depletion, footprint-type indicators are gaining importance. Such indicators, however, fail to differentiate between vastly different degrees of resource availability across regions. Using crop suitability areas and metal reserve base data, we calculate scarcity-weighted land and metal footprints for the major economies with the EXIOBASE global multi-regional input-output model. Scarcity-weighting causes a significant reordering of the global rankings of countries for both land and metal footprints. Land scarcity focuses mostly on cereals (∼54% from the total agricultural land used) and oil crops (∼15%), the former being notably affected by water scarcity issues in Asia and the Middle East. Metal scarcity focuses on copper ores (∼69%) and iron (∼11%), the former being a globally scarce metal impacting multiple economies. The large impact of scarcity-weighting suggests that, while non-weighted resource footprints are a valid proxy of resource use, these are not always aligned with further implications of resource depletion and supply security. In this sense, scarcity-weighting can offer an initial overview of those countries where analyses at finer scales may be more valuable. Our results also show that international trade is a major driver of land and metal depletion in some developing regions. This highlights the intersection of environmental justice and globalization, as the burden of resource depletion often falls into poorer regions which critically rely on exports

Nexus Strength: A Novel Metric for Assessing the Global Resource Nexus

The limited access to natural resources is a major constraint for sustainability at various spatial scales. This challenge has sparked scholarly interest in the linkages or nexus between resources, with a view to helping anticipate unforeseen consequences, identify trade-offs and co-benefits, and find optimal solutions. Yet, despite decades of research, limitations in the scope and focus of studies remain. Recently constructed multiregional input-output (MRIO) databases, which cover the global economy and its use of resources in unprecedented detail, allow systematically investigation of resource use by production as well as consumption processes at various levels and garner new insights into global resource nexus (GRN) issues. This article addresses the question of how to prioritize such issues. Using the MRIO database, EXIOBASE, we address the GRN considering five key resources: blue water, primary energy, land, metal ores, and minerals. We propose a metric of nexus strength, which relies on linear goal programming to rank industries and products based on its associated combined resource use and various weighting schemes. Our results validate current research efforts by identifying water, energy, and land as the strongest linkages globally and at all scales and, at the same time, lead to novel findings into the GRN, in that (1) it appears stronger and more complex from the consumption perspective, (2) metals and minerals emerge as critical, yet undervalued, components, and (3) it manifests with a considerable diversity across countries owing to differences in the economic structure, domestic policy, technology, and resource endowments

Applying consumer responsibility principle in evaluating environmental load of carbon emissions

There is a need for a proper indicator in order to assess the environmental impact of international trade, therefore using the carbon footprint as an indicator can be relevant and useful. The aim of this study is to show from a methodological perspective how the carbon footprint, combined with input- output models can be used for analysing the impacts of international trade on the sustainable use of national resources in a country. The use of the input-output approach has the essential advantage of being able to track the transformation of goods through the economy. The study examines the environmental impact of consumption related to international trade, using the consumer responsibility principle. In this study the use of the carbon footprint and input-output methodology is shown on the example of the Hungarian consumption and the impact of international trade. Moving from a production- based approach in climate policy to a consumption-perspective principle and allocation, would also help to increase the efficiency of emission reduction targets and the evaluation of the ecological impacts of international trade

Annex 2 - Metrics and methodology

This annex on methods and metrics provides background information on material used in the Working Group III Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (WGIII AR5). The material presented in this annex documents metrics, methods, and common data sets that are typically used across multiple chapters of the report. The annex is composed of three parts: Part I introduces standards metrics and common definitions adopted in the report; Part II presents methods to derive or calculate certain quantities used in the report; and Part III provides more detailed background information about common data sources that go beyond what can be included in the chapters. While this structure may help readers to navigate through the annex, it is not possible in all cases to unambiguously assign a certain topic to one of these parts, naturally leading to some overlap between the parts

Beyond peak emission transfers: historical impacts of globalization and future impacts of climate policies on international emission transfers

Globalization of supply chains has resulted in rapid increases in emission transfers from the developing to the developed world. As outsourcing has risen, developed countries have been able to decarbonize domestically, at the expense of increased emissions in developing countries. However, the rapid improvement of carbon efficiency in developing regions together with the post-2008 deceleration in international trade raises the question of whether such embodied emission transfers have peaked. Here we update historical analysis, finding that emission transfers between OECD and non-OECD countries peaked in 2006, and have been declining since. The reversal is principally due to the reduction in the emissions intensity of traded goods, rather than the volume of trade. A more recent decline in embodied emissions transfers is also observed in trade between developing countries. We analyse whether these trends are likely to continue, by exploring a baseline and a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) scenario with the Macro-ejconometric Energy-Environment-Economy Model (E3ME) model. The results suggest that absolute embodied emissions will plateau at current levels or slowly return to pre-2008- crisis levels, and differences between the NDC and baseline scenarios imply that NDC policies will not result in significant carbon leakage. However, the share of national footprint embodied in imports, at least for countries with ambitious decarbonization policies, will likely increase. This suggests that, despite the world-wide stabilization of emissions transfers, addressing emissions embodied in imports will become increasingly important for reducing carbon footprints. // Key policy insights: (1) Emissions embodied in imports have plateaued since 2006, and are unlikely to return to the peak of the mid-2000s. (2) For developed countries, as domestic decarbonization occurs, the share of emissions embodied in imports as a percentage of the total national carbon footprint will increase. (3) The Paris NDCs in themselves are unlikely to cause significant carbon leakage. (4) Climate policy will ideally focus on reducing both production and consumption emissions, through a variety of mechanisms, especially centred around international assistance

Beyond peak emission transfers: historical impacts of globalization and future impacts of climate policies on international emission transfers

Globalization of supply chains has resulted in rapid increases in emission transfers from the developing to the developed world. As outsourcing has risen, developed countries have been able to decarbonize domestically, at the expense of increased emissions in developing countries. However, the rapid improvement of carbon efficiency in developing regions together with the post-2008 deceleration in international trade raises the question of whether such embodied emission transfers have peaked. Here we update historical analysis, finding that emission transfers between OECD and non-OECD countries peaked in 2006, and have been declining since. The reversal is principally due to the reduction in the emissions intensity of traded goods, rather than the volume of trade. A more recent decline in embodied emissions transfers is also observed in trade between developing countries. We analyse whether these trends are likely to continue, by exploring a baseline and a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) scenario with the Macro-econometric Energy-Environment-Economy Model (E3ME) model. The results suggest that absolute embodied emissions will plateau at current levels or slowly return to pre-2008- crisis levels, and differences between the NDC and baseline scenarios imply that NDC policies will not result in significant carbon leakage. However, the share of national footprint embodied in imports, at least for countries with ambitious decarbonization policies, will likely increase. This suggests that, despite the world-wide stabilization of emissions transfers, addressing emissions embodied in imports will become increasingly important for reducing carbon footprints.Industrial Ecolog