Abstract
In the past few decades, economic globalization has driven rapid growth of cross-border trade and a new international division of labor, leading to increasing inter- country embodied carbon flows. Multi-region input-output (MRIO) analysis is used to identify embodied carbon flows between major world regions, including seven regions along the Belt and Road (BR), and the spatial distribution of production- and consumption-based carbon intensities. The results show that current embodied carbon flows are virtually all from BR regions to developed countries, with more than 95% of world net embodied carbon exports coming from BR regions. Consumption in the United States and European Union countries induce about 30% of the carbon emissions in most BR regions, indicating that the former bear a high proportion of consumers’ responsibility for the carbon emitted in the latter. For this reason, measuring environmental responsibilities from consumption rather than a production- based perspective is more equitable, while developing countries should be given a louder voice in the construction through dialogue and cooperation, in part in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, of an inclusive global climate governance system.
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Foundation: National Key Research and Development Program of China, No.2016YFA0602804; National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41701135
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Han, M., Yao, Q., Liu, W. et al. Tracking embodied carbon flows in the Belt and Road regions. J. Geogr. Sci. 28, 1263–1274 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-018-1524-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-018-1524-7