Ecol. Econ. http://doi.org/h29 (2012)

Credit: © STOCKPHOTO/THINKSTOCK

Allocating the carbon emissions that are associated with products exchanged in the international market to the producers or consumers of the goods is critical for global climate policy.

María-Ángeles Cadarso of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, and colleagues outline the idea of 'shared responsibility' between both buyers and sellers as a way of allocating emissions from internationally traded goods according to the value added by countries to each step of the global product chain. They apply their model to the Spanish economy, divided into 46 sectors, during the period 2000–2005. They first allocated the emissions from imported goods only to Spain and found that the country's total emissions increase by 40.8% in 2005. Using the shared-allocation model, Spain's total emissions were found to increase by only 34.4% in 2005.

The researchers conclude that using a shared-allocation approach would help to discriminate which economic policies are more useful for climate change mitigation.