Natural resource scarcity is no longer merely a remote possibility and governments increasingly seek information about the global distribution of resource use and related environmental pressures. This paper presents an international distributional analysis of natural resource use indicators. These encompass both territorial (national production) and footprint (national consumption) indicators for land-related pressures (human appropriation of net primary production, HANPP, and embodied HANPP), for material use (domestic material extraction and consumption and material footprint), and for carbon emissions (territorial carbon emissions and carbon footprints). Our main question is "What, both from a territorial and a footprint perspective, are the main driving factors of international environmental inequality?". We show that, for the environmental indicators we studied, inequality tends to be higher for footprint indicators than for territorial ones. The exception is land use intensity (as measured by HANPP), for which geographical drivers mainly determine the distribution pattern. The international distribution of material consumption is mainly a result of economic drivers whereas, for domestic extraction, demographic drivers can explain almost half of the distribution pattern. Finally, carbon emissions are the environmental pressure that shows the highest international inequality because of the larger contribution of economic drivers.

This paper reviews the empirical literature analysing the effects of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on low-carbon technological change. The emerging evidence is assessed, with references to both relevant economic concepts and the evolving regulation of the EU ETS through time. The two most robust indications of the literature are: a) the EU ETS appears to have been more effective in stimulating innovation of low-carbon technologies rather than their adoption; and b) free allocation (grandfathering) tended to hamper low-carbon investments in Phases I (2005)(2006)(2007) and II (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012). However, a complete general picture of the impact of the EU ETS on low-carbon technological change is missing. The main gap regards the lack of empirical evidence for Phase III (2013III ( -2020. Especially econometric studies are few, due to the lack of suitable databases accessible to researchers -a problem that the relevant public authorities are urged to address. Thanks to the recent reforms of the EU ETS, the incentives for innovation and adoption of low-carbon technologies are probably stronger today than ever before.

This paper analyses the international inequalities in CO 2 emissions intensity for the period 1971-2009 and assesses explanatory factors. Group, additive and multiplicative methodologies of inequality decomposition are employed. The first allows us to understand the role of regional groups; the second allows us to investigate the role of different fossil energy sources (coal, oil and gas); and the third allows us to clarify the separated role of the carbonisation index and the energy intensity in the pattern observed for inequalities in CO 2 intensities. The results show that, first, the reduction in global emissions intensity has coincided with a significant reduction in international inequality. Second, the bulk of this inequality and its reduction are attributed to differences between the groups of countries considered. Third, coal is the main energy source explaining these inequalities, although the growth in the relative contribution of gas is also remarkable. Fourth, the bulk of inequalities between countries and its decline are explained by differences in energy intensities, although there are significant differences in the patterns demonstrated by different groups of countries.The policy implications of these results are discussed.