Ecological unequal exchange: international trade and uneven cross-national social and environmental processes

James C. Rice

doi:10.7273/000005660

Ecological unequal exchange refers to the inequalities enacted through international trade wherein economically dominant export partners appropriate value embodied in natural resource assets. Countries advantageously situated within the global economy secure favorable terms of trade promoting disproportionate access to global natural resources and sink-capacity services of ecological systems. This facilitates the externalization of the negative environmental consequences of domestic production and consumption onto less developed countries. The present study empirically evaluates three dimensions underlying ecological unequal exchange: 1) Environmental cost-shifting or externalization of the negative consequences of material consumption; 2) Disproportionate cross-national utilization of global environmental space or available sink-capacity and biologically productive area; and, 3) Underdevelopment as a consequence of the reliance upon and undervaluation of natural resource exports. This study examines the differential impacts of international trade through utilization of slope dummy interaction terms within a series of ordinary least squares regression models. The sample consists of 148 countries at all levels of development.; Results illustrate low and lower middle-income countries with a greater proportion of exports to the core industrialized countries exhibit lower consumption of environmental resources. This suggests the structure of international trade supports the disproportionate per capita material consumption of industrialized countries concurrent with the under-consumption of the poorest countries in the world. Further, low income countries with a greater proportion of non-fuel natural resource exports demonstrate lower levels of social development. When fuels are included in the calculation low, lower middle, and upper middle-income countries with a greater proportion of natural resource exports are characterized by lower social wellbeing. Analysis reveals low-income countries with a greater proportion of natural resource exports demonstrate higher rates of deforestation, 1990-2000. In addition, low income and upper middle-income countries with a greater proportion of exports to the core exhibit higher deforestation, providing evidence of environmental cost-shifting dynamics. The present study uncovers evidence of each of the three dimensions of ecological unequal exchange, suggesting structural relations underpinning capital accumulation on a global scale forge systemic patterns of ecological transformation. Cross-national ecological interdependencies contribute not only to processes of global environmental change but also the underdevelopment of peripheral countries.

Ecological unequal exchange: international trade and uneven cross-national social and environmental processes

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