▋One Earth
Volume 6, Issue 2, 17 February 2023, Pages 167-181
Developing countries’ responsibilities for CO2 emissions in value chains are larger and growing faster than those of developed countries
Bo Meng1 2 3 13, Yu Liu 4 Yuning Gao 5 16 Meng Li 6 Zhi Wang 7, Jinjun Xue 8 13, Robbie Andrew 9, Kuishuang Feng 10, Ye Qi 11, Yongping Sun 12 13, Huaping Sun 14 15, Keying Wang 13
1 Institute of Developing Economy – Japan External Trade Organization, Chiba, Japan
2 Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
3 Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, Tokyo, Japan
4 College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
5 School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
6 School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
7 Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA
8 Nagoya University – SinoCarbon Carbon Neutral Innovation Joint Laboratory, Nagoya, Japan
9 CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway
10 Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
11 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
12 Institute of State Governance, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
13 The Collaborative Innovation Center for Emissions Trading System Co-constructed by the Province and Ministry, Hubei University of Economics, Wuhan, China
14 School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China
15 School of Finance and Economics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
16 lead contact
* Correspondence: yu.liu@pku.edu.cn (Y.L), gao yuning@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (Y.G.), mengli2010@situ.edu.cn (M.L)https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.01.006
Highlights
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Bilateral country-sector CO2 emissions are traced along GVCs
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GVC accounting approach helps identify self- and shared emission responsibility
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Developing countries’ increasing emission responsibility requires more attention
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Climate negotiation must carefully review responsibility sharing along GVCs
Science for society
Global trade has resulted in multiple socioeconomic benefits including employment, knowledge transfers, and innovations. However, CO2 emissions associated with trade activities continue to rise, resulting in an intense debate on “who should be responsible for what degree of emissions reduction?” This debate is particularly fierce between developing and developed countries that are often recognized as producers and consumers. The rise of massive global value chains (GVCs), however, makes it increasingly complex to differentiate producers from consumers: e.g., China-mined metals are exported to Japan where vehicles are produced before being imported and sold in China. This has imposed great challenges in formulating effective policies that clearly identify and allocate responsibilities for emissions along GVCs. We have designed a new method to separate self-responsibility (CO2 embodied in purely domestic value chains) from shared responsibilities (CO2 embodied in GVCs). We show that developing countries’ GVC-based responsibility for global CO2 emissions has surpassed that of developed countries since 2012 and is increasing quickly. Our study offers scientific-based new evidence to global climate policy discussions via the lens of trade-related responsibility sharing.
Summary
Carbon emissions associated with international trade are significant. The emergence of complex global value chains (GVCs) in recent decades, in which a country can operate as both a consumer and producer simultaneously, has led to a further rise in emissions. The complexity of these GVCs makes it increasingly difficult to determine what country is responsible for the emissions embodied within them. Here, we propose a new method based on input-output analysis to identify and distinguish self- and shared responsibility for CO2 emissions along GVCs, where self-responsibility describes emissions embodied in purely domestic value chains. Our results show that developing countries’ self-responsibility for CO2 emissions has been the largest driver in the growth of total GVC embodied emissions since 2001. Even considering the shared responsibility for emission transfers via GVCs, developing countries’ total responsibility has exceeded that of developed countries since 2012. We argue that climate negotiations should seriously consider GVC-based responsibility sharing to enable more effective climate policies.
Key Words
emission responsibility，global value chain，emission transfer，carbon leakage， climate change，trade in value added，input-output analysis，carbon neutrality
