Spatial Polarization of the Ecological Footprint Distribution

Abstract

The international allocation of natural resources is determined, not by any ethical or ecological criteria, but by the dominance of market mechanisms. From a core-periphery perspective, this allocation may even be driven by historically determined structural patterns, with a core group of countries whose consumption appropriates most available natural resources, and another group, having low natural resource consumption, which plays a peripheral role. This article consists of an empirical distributional analysis of natural resource consumption (as measured by Ecological Footprints) whose purpose is to assess the extent to which the distribution of consumption responds to polarization (as opposed to mere inequality). To assess this, we estimate and decompose different polarization indices for a balanced sample of 119 countries over the period 1961 to 2007. Our results points toward a polarized distribution which is consistent with a core-periphery framework.

International inequality of environmental pressures: Decomposition and comparative analysis

“…This is the case for There have been many studies that consider distributional issues related to resource use and related ecological pressures. The topics and indicators investigated range from the distribution of CO 2 emissions (Strazicich and List, 2003;Nguyen Van, 2005;Aldy, 2006;Padilla and Serrano, 2006;Duro and Padilla, 2006;Ezcurra, 2007;Duro and Padilla, 2008;Criado and Grether, 2011;Cantore, 2011;Steinberger et al 2012), to energy efficiency distribution (Alcantara and Duro, 2004;Miketa and Mulder, 2005;Duro et al 2014), of the ecological footprint (Dongjing et al 2010, White, 2007Wu andXu, 2010, Duro andTeixidó-Figueras 2013;Teixidó-Figueras and Duro 2014, 2015a, 2015b, material flow indicators Giljum et al, 2014a;Wiedmann et al, 2015), water (Chen and Chen, 2013;Hoekstra and Mekonnen, 2012) and land (Bruckner et al, 2015;Weinzettel et al, 2013;Yu et al, 2013). These analyses provide information on how resource use is currently shared among nations.…”

Transforming Biodiversity Governance

“…In addition to localized detrimental impacts of intensive farming, the land-sparing approach can also have far-reaching impacts on biodiversity: Land-sparing in one area can have spill-over effects that drive relocation and expansion of production in other regions, rather than leading to an overall reduction of biodiversity threats (Meyfroidt, 2018;Meyfroidt et al, 2013;Rudel et al, 2009). Even in regions where the extension of agricultural land use remains relatively constant (such as within the EU), the "imported land" needed to satisfy consumer demand continues to grow (Asici andAcar, 2016, Teixidó-Figueras andDuro, 2014;Yu et al, 2013). This shows that consumption decisions and agricultural management in a globalizing world are "telecoupled" (Friies et al 2016;Sun et al, 2017).…”