Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Analysis
  • Published:

Ecologically unequal exchanges driven by EU consumption

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 587–598 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

In our globalized economy, the consumption of goods and services induces economic benefits but also environmental pressures and impacts around the world. Consumption levels are especially high in the current 27 member countries of the European Union (EU), which are some of the wealthiest economies in the world. Here, we determine the global distribution of ten selected environmental pressures and impacts, as well as value added induced by EU consumption from 1995 to 2019. We show that large shares of all analysed environmental pressures and impacts are outsourced to countries and regions outside the EU, while more than 85% of the economic benefits stay within the member countries. But there is also uneven distribution of costs and benefits within the EU. Over the analysed period, pressures and impacts induced by EU consumption largely decreased within the EU but increased outside its borders. We show that Eastern European neighbours of the EU experienced the highest environmental pressures and impacts per unit of GDP associated with EU consumption. The findings of this research add to the discussions on outsourcing environmental pressures and impacts and highlight the need for a reduction of pressures and impacts induced by EU consumption.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Relative distribution of pressures and impacts associated with EU-27 consumption inside and outside of the EU-27 in 2019.
Fig. 2: Relative distribution of pressures and impacts associated with EU-27 consumption in 2019.
Fig. 3: Relative change of pressures and impacts associated with EU-27 consumption between 1995 and 2019 inside the EU-27, outside the EU-27 and in total.
Fig. 4: Relative distribution of value added associated with EU-27 consumption in 2019.
Fig. 5: EV-ratios in 2019 for pressures and impacts associated with EU-27 consumption.
Fig. 6: EV-ratios from 1995 to 2019 for pressures and impacts associated with EU-27 consumption for countries who joined the EU after 2000.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Final demand data for the 27 EU member countries, as well as global MRIO tables and environmental extensions were retrieved from the EXIOBASE v.3.8.1 database (https://zenodo.org/record/4588235)14. Coefficients for biodiversity loss from land use were collected from ref. 12. Data for calculating regional average GDPpc were retrieved from the World Development Indicators DataBank (https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators)63, the World Economic Outlook (October 2022) (https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/datasets/WEO)25 and the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 (https://population.un.org/wpp/)64. For creating maps, shapefiles from Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/)65 and the Eurostat R package66 were used. Data for recreating the results and figures are available in the Supplementary Code. The main results are collected in the Supplementary Data.

Code availability

Code developed for data processing in MATLAB, Python and R are available in the Supplementary Code.

References

  1. Rockström, J. et al. A safe operation space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E. & Zucman, G. World Inequality Report 2022 (Belknap Press, 2022).

  3. Ivanova, D. et al. Environmental impact assessment of household consumption. J. Ind. Ecol. 20, 526–536 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Steen-Olsen, K., Weinzettel, J., Cranston, G., Ercin, A. E. & Hertwich, E. G. Carbon, land, and water footprint accounts for the European Union: consumption, production, and displacements through international trade. Environ. Sci. Technol. 46, 10883–10891 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Tukker, A. et al. Environmental and resource footprints in a global context: Europe’s structural deficit in resource endowments. Glob. Environ. Change 40, 171–181 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Bruckner, B., Hubacek, K., Shan, Y., Zhong, H. & Feng, K. Impacts of poverty alleviation on national and global carbon emissions. Nat. Sustain. 5, 311–320 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Hubacek, K. et al. Global carbon inequality. Energy, Ecol. Environ. 2, 361–369 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Yu, Y., Feng, K. & Hubacek, K. Tele-connecting local consumption to global land use. Glob. Environ. Change 23, 1178–1186 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wilting, H. C., Schipper, A. M., Bakkenes, M., Meijer, J. R. & Huijbregts, M. A. J. Quantifying biodiversity losses due to human consumption: a global-scale footprint analysis. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51, 3298–3306 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Lucas, P. L., Wilting, H. C., Hof, A. F. & Van Vuuren, D. P. Allocating planetary boundaries to large economies: distributional consequences of alternative perspectives on distributive fairness. Glob. Environ. Change 60, 102017 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Beylot, A. et al. Assessing the environmental impacts of EU consumption at macro-scale. J. Clean. Prod. 216, 382–393 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Koslowski, M., Moran, D. D., Tisserant, A., Verones, F. & Wood, R. Quantifying Europe’s biodiversity footprints and the role of urbanization and income. Glob. Sustain. 3, e1 (2020).

  13. Lutter, S., Pfister, S., Giljum, S., Wieland, H. & Mutel, C. Spatially explicit assessment of water embodied in European trade: a product-level multi-regional input-output analysis. Glob. Environ. Change 38, 171–182 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Stadler, K. et al. EXIOBASE 3 (3.8.1) [Data set]. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.4588235 (2021).

  15. Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe (European Commission, 2011).

  16. Steinmann, Z. J. N. et al. Headline environmental indicators revisited with the global multi-regional input–output database EXIOBASE. J. Ind. Ecol. 22, 565–573 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Ivanova, D. et al. Mapping the carbon footprint of EU regions. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 054013 (2017).

  18. Wiedmann, T. O. et al. The material footprint of nations. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 6271–6276 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Lenzen, M. et al. Implementing the material footprint to measure progress towards Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 12. Nat. Sustain. 5, 157–166 (2022).

  20. Dorninger, C. et al. The effect of industrialization and globalization on domestic land-use: a global resource footprint perspective. Glob. Environ. Change 69, 102311 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Mekonnen, M. M. & Gerbens-Leenes, W. The water footprint of food. Water 12, 12 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Prell, C. & Feng, K. Unequal carbon exchanges: the environmental and economic impacts of iconic U.S. consumption items. J. Ind. Ecol. 20, 537–546 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Prell, C., Feng, K., Sun, L., Geores, M. & Hubacek, K. The economic gains and environmental losses of US consumption: a world-systems and input-output approach. Soc. Forces 93, 405–428 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Prell, C. Wealth and pollution inequalities of global trade: a network and input-output approach. Soc. Sci. J. 53, 111–121 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. World Economic Outlook (October 2022) (International Monetary Fund, 2022); https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/datasets/WEO

  26. Wilting, H. C., Schipper, A. M., Ivanova, O., Ivanova, D. & Huijbregts, M. A. J. Subnational greenhouse gas and land-based biodiversity footprints in the European Union. J. Ind. Ecol. 25, 79–94 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13042

  27. Cabernard, L. & Pfister, S. A highly resolved MRIO database for analyzing environmental footprints and Green Economy Progress. Sci. Total Environ. 755, 142587 (2021).

  28. Jakob, M., Ward, H. & Steckel, J. C. Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits. Glob. Environ. Chang. 66, 102207 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wood, R. et al. The structure, drivers and policy implications of the European carbon footprint. Clim. Policy 20, S39–S57 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Wood, R. et al. Growth in environmental footprints and environmental impacts embodied in trade: resource efficiency indicators from EXIOBASE3. J. Ind. Ecol. 22, 553–564 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Hubacek, K., Chen, X., Feng, K., Wiedmann, T. & Shan, Y. Evidence of decoupling consumption-based CO2 emissions from economic growth. Adv. Appl. Energy 4, 100074 (2021).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Wiedmann, T. & Lenzen, M. Environmental and social footprints of international trade. Nat. Geosci. 11, 314–321 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Dorninger, C. et al. Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: Implications for sustainability in the 21st century. Ecol. Econ. 179, 106824 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Hickel, J., Dorninger, C., Wieland, H. & Suwandi, I. Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015. Glob. Environ. Change 73, 102467 (2022).

  35. Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360, 987–992 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Ivanova, D. et al. Quantifying the potential for climate change mitigation of consumption options. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 093001 (2020).

  37. Springmann, M. et al. Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature 562, 519–525 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Ivanova, D. & Wood, R. The unequal distribution of household carbon footprints in Europe and its link to sustainability. Glob. Sustain. 3, e18 (2020).

  39. Hickel, J., O’Neill, D. W., Fanning, A. L. & Zoomkawala, H. National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017. Lancet Planet. Heal. 6, e342–e349 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Otto, I. M., Kim, K. M., Dubrovsky, N. & Lucht, W. Shift the focus from the super-poor to the super-rich. Nat. Clim. Change 9, 82–84 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Wiedmann, T., Lenzen, M., Keyßer, L. T. & Steinberger, J. K. Scientists’ warning on affluence. Nat. Commun. 11, 3107 (2020).

  42. Nielsen, K. S., Nicholas, K. A., Creutzig, F., Dietz, T. & Stern, P. C. The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions. Nat. Energy 6, 1011–1016 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Jakob, M. Why carbon leakage matters and what can be done against it. One Earth 4, 609–614 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Lave, L. B. Using input–output analysis to estimate economy-wide discharges. Environ. Sci. Technol. 29, 420A–426A (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  45. Wiedmann, T. A review of recent multi-region input–output models used for consumption-based emission and resource accounting. Ecol. Econ. 69, 211–222 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Ewing, B. R. et al. Integrating ecological and water footprint accounting in a multi-regional input–output framework. Ecol. Indic. 23, 1–8 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Brizga, J., Feng, K. & Hubacek, K. Household carbon footprints in the Baltic States: a global multi-regional input–output analysis from 1995 to 2011. Appl. Energy 189, 780–788 (2017).

  48. Hertwich, E. G. & Peters, G. P. Carbon footprint of nations: a global, trade-linked analysis. Environ. Sci. Technol. 43, 6414–6420 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  49. Zhong, H., Feng, K., Sun, L., Cheng, L. & Hubacek, K. Household carbon and energy inequality in Latin American and Caribbean countries. J. Environ. Manag. 273, 110979 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Stadler, K. et al. EXIOBASE 3: developing a time series of detailed environmentally extended multi-regional input–output tables. J. Ind. Ecol. 22, 502–515 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Hardadi, G., Buchholz, A. & Pauliuk, S. Implications of the distribution of German household environmental footprints across income groups for integrating environmental and social policy design. J. Ind. Ecol. 25, 95–113 (2021).

  52. Zhang, Q. et al. Transboundary health impacts of transported global air pollution and international trade. Nature 543, 705–709 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  53. Hoekstra, A. Y., Mekonnen, M. M., Chapagain, A. K., Mathews, R. E. & Richter, B. D. Global monthly water scarcity: blue water footprints versus blue water availability. PLoS ONE 7, e32688 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  54. IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (eds Solomon, S. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

  55. Schmidt, S. et al. Understanding GHG emissions from Swedish consumption—current challenges in reaching the generational goal. J. Clean. Prod. 212, 428–437 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Huijbregts, M. A. J. Priority Assessment of Toxic Substances in the Frame of LCA. Development and Application of the Multi-Media Fate, Exposure and Effect Model USES-LCA (Interfaculty Department of Envrionmental Science, 1999).

  57. Huijbregts, M. A. J. Priority Assessment of Toxic Substances in the Frame of LCA. Time Horizon Dependency in Toxicity Potentials Calculated with the Multi-Media Fate, Exposure and Effects Model USES-LCA (Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, 2000).

  58. International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook (Publications Office EU, 2011).

  59. Verones, F., Moran, D., Stadler, K., Kanemoto, K. & Wood, R. Resource footprints an d their ecosystem consequences. Sci. Rep. 7, 40743 (2017).

  60. Chaudhary, A., Pfister, S. & Hellweg, S. Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to global agriculture, pasture and forest land use from a producer and consumer perspective. Environ. Sci. Technol. 50, 3928–3936 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  61. Chaudhary, A., Verones, F., De Baan, L. & Hellweg, S. Quantifying land use impacts on biodiversity: combining species-area models and vulnerability indicators. Environ. Sci. Technol. 49, 9987–9995 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  62. Marquardt, S. G. et al. Consumption-based biodiversity footprints—do different indicators yield different results? Ecol. Indic. 103, 461–470 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. World Development Indicators DataBank (World Bank, 2022); https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

  64. World Population Prospects 2022 (United Nations, 2022); https://population.un.org/wpp/

  65. Natural Earth Vector (Natural Earth, 2022); https://www.naturalearthdata.com/

  66. Lahti, L., Huovari, J., Kainu, M. & Biecek, P. Retrieval and analysis of eurostat open data with the Eurostat package. R J. 9, 385–392 (2017).

  67. Castellani, V., Beylot, A. & Sala, S. Environmental impacts of household consumption in Europe: comparing process-based LCA and environmentally extended input-output analysis. J. Clean. Prod. 240, 117966 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank support from Greenpeace Germany for the initial data analysis, modelling and discussions as part of the project ‘Outsourced Environmental Degradation of the EU’. We acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (7221101088, 72140001, 72243004, 72174111), the Shandong Natural Science Foundation of China (ZR2021MG013) and the Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China (21ZDA065).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES), Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

    Benedikt Bruckner, Yuli Shan, Yannan Zhou & Klaus Hubacek

  2. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Yuli Shan

  3. Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

    Christina Prell

  4. Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yannan Zhou

  5. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yannan Zhou

  6. Institute of Blue and Green Development, Weihai Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Shandong University, Weihai, China

    Honglin Zhong

  7. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Kuishuang Feng

Authors
  1. Benedikt Bruckner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yuli Shan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Christina Prell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yannan Zhou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Honglin Zhong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Kuishuang Feng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Klaus Hubacek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

K.H., Y.S. and B.B. conceptualized and designed the study with crucial inputs from K.F. and H.Z. B.B. performed the MRIO and EV-ratios analysis with help from Y.S. and Y.Z. C.P. performed the social network and regression analysis with help from Y.Z. Y.S., C.P. and B.B. prepared the manuscript. B.B., K.H., C.P. and Y.S. contributed to writing the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yuli Shan, Christina Prell or Klaus Hubacek.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Sustainability thanks Kurt Kratena, Konstantin Stadler and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Relative change of pressures and impacts associated with EU-27 consumption between 1995 and 2019.

Relative changes within EU-27 countries are highlighted in an extra panel in the bottom left. The ecotoxicity results from EXIOBASE dataset have to be seen as lower bounds.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Discussion, Fig, 1 and Tables 1–4.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Data

Main results.

Supplementary Code

Zip file containing code and data necessary to recreate the results of the analysis.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bruckner, B., Shan, Y., Prell, C. et al. Ecologically unequal exchanges driven by EU consumption. Nat Sustain 6, 587–598 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01055-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01055-8

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene