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Methodology : environmental impact accounting approaches -- Local consumption and global air pollution -- Local consumption and global land use -- Carbon footprint of Chinese megacities : the case study of Beijing, Tianjin -- The economic gains and environmental losses of U.S. consumption -- Consumption-based accounting of U.S. CO2 emissions from 1990 to 2010 -- Global water footprint of nations : a case study of the UK -- Conclusions : stepping back.

The environmental impacts of plastics have become an important political and academic topic. One of the main applications of plastics is packaging, a product with a very short service life, leading to a wide range of environmental problems. In this Perspective, we look at the potential environmental consequences (in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and land and water footprints) of substitution of petrochemical plastics used for packaging in Europe with bioplastics. The research is based on a review of life cycle impact assessment studies and additional calculations to assess the footprints of this substitution. The results demonstrate that currently it does not seem feasible to replace all the petrochemical plastic packaging with bioplastic because this will inevitably result in a considerable increase of land and water use. Unless we find ways to decrease plastic demand, most of the efforts to stop plastic pollution are likely to prove temporary and inadequate.

China has achieved notable success in developing its economy with approximate 10 percent average annual GDP growth over the last two decades. At the same time, energy consumption and CO2 emissions almost doubled every five years, which led China to be the world top emitter in 2007. In response, China's government has put forward a carbon mitigation target of 40%-45% reduction of CO2 emission intensity by 2020. To better understand the potential for success or failure of such a policy, it is essential to assess different driving forces such as population, lifestyle and technology and their associated CO2 emissions. This study confirms that increase of affluence has been the main driving force for China's CO2 emissions since the late 1970s, which outweighs reductions achieved through technical progress. Meanwhile, the contribution of population growth to CO2 emissions was relatively small. We also found a huge disparity between urban and rural households in terms of changes of lifestyle and consumption patterns. Lifestyles in urban China are beginning to resemble Western lifestyles, and approaching their level of CO2 emissions. Therefore, in addition to the apparent inefficiencies in terms of production technologies there is also a lot of room for improvement on the consumption side especially in interaction of current infrastructure investments and future consumption.

Energy subsidies have been criticized due to their economic inefficiency and promotion of wasteful usage of energy and associated carbon emissions. Conversely, environmental taxes are advocated as efficient policy instruments. Nonetheless, removing subsidies and taxing energy can be politically challenging because vulnerable households rely on low energy prices. This study analyzes the impact of energy price increases on different income quintiles groups in eleven Latin American and Caribbean countries using an energy-extended input-output approach. Our results show that higher-income groups benefit more from low energy prices than low-income groups when tracing both the direct and indirect (supply chain) effects of energy price variations. Energy subsidies are a very expensive option to transfer income to poor households. Across the countries considered, using energy subsidies it would cost about $12 to transfer $1 of income to households in the poorest quintile. Recycling a small fraction of fiscal revenues from energy subsidy removal or energy taxation could be sufficient to compensate vulnerable households from the effects of price hikes. Our findings suggest that cash transfers to poor households and targeted subsidies for public transportation or food are the most effective measures to compensate households for welfare loss.

Energy subsidies have been criticized due to their economic inefficiency and promotion of wasteful usage of energy and associated carbon emissions. Conversely, environmental taxes are advocated as efficient policy instruments. Nonetheless, removing subsidies and taxing energy can be politically challenging because vulnerable households rely on low energy prices. This study analyzes the impact of energy price increases on different income quintiles groups in eleven Latin American and Caribbean countries using an energy-extended input-output approach. Our results show that higher-income groups benefit more from low energy prices than low-income groups when tracing both the direct and indirect (supply chain) effects of energy price variations. Energy subsidies are a very expensive option to transfer income to poor households. Across the countries considered, using energy subsidies it would cost about $12 to transfer $1 of income to households in the poorest quintile. Recycling a small fraction of fiscal revenues from energy subsidy removal or energy taxation could be sufficient to compensate vulnerable households from the effects of price hikes. Our findings suggest that cash transfers to poor households and targeted subsidies for public transportation or food are the most effective measures to compensate households for welfare loss.

The global policy debate on just transitions is concerned with how to achieve a socially just and acceptable transition toward a climate-neutral and climate-resilient global economy. At the core of this debate is the assumption that efforts to combat environmental threats will not succeed unless combined with measures to reduce poverty and inequality. Our research explores the potential of carbon fiscal reforms, combining a carbon tax of levels deemed appropriate to achieve climate targets and the transfer of the revenues raised to vulnerable households. The current energy and cost-of-living crisis shows the importance of protecting the poorest and most vulnerable households from price increases. It also shows the difficulty of achieving short- and long-term policy priorities. Despite the current spikes in energy prices, carbon fiscal reforms can achieve both social and environmental goals through simultaneously decreasing emissions and reducing poverty and inequality. They should act as an effective enabler of just transitions. Carbon fiscal reform can avoid some environmental impacts by incentivising reductions in emissions. Carbon pricing has been increasingly advocated and is now at the centre of policy debates, including the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) and the recent German presidency of the world's leading industrial nations (G7). But carbon fiscal reforms can also be used to raise revenue from carbon pricing instruments to offset the negative effects of higher prices on poorer households as well as further reaching distributional targets and poverty alleviation. Climate targets are negotiated every year, including at COP, hence it is critical to re-evaluate and improve estimates of the distributional impacts of climate policies such as carbon pricing. Public acceptability of climate policies is key to their implementation, but it depends to a large extent on the perceived fairness of such policies. Recycling revenues from carbon taxes directly back to vulnerable households is likely to gain the approval of a large number of people, especially in low-income countries where the high proportion of the population involved in the informal economy means that lowering income tax does not benefit the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society. But the targeting of these direct transfers needs careful consideration. Here, we assess the impact on poverty and inequality of a global carbon tax and national redistribution of revenues to vulnerable households. We look at different options for such redistribution, including a lump sum payment, the use of current social assistance programmes, and an expansion of social assistance following COVID-19. We find that a carbon tax of US$50/tCO2 without revenue redistribution could increase global extreme poverty, but the redistribution of revenue from such a carbon tax could substantially reduce poverty by between 16% and 27% (110 to 190 million people), and reduce inequality (the average Gini coefficient would decline by between 4% and 8%), depending on the scenario. This shows that the way in which revenue from a carbon tax is redistributed greatly affects its impact, underlining the importance of policy design and targeting mechanisms. The recycling of revenues should also take into account the specific political economy of a country and consider international transfers. These findings provide policy makers with a strong basis for informing discussions, starting off with those at COP27, in which ambitious climate targets and just transition should both remain central goals in the context of the ongoing international energy crisis.

Sustainable water management is one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and is characterized by a high level of interdependencies with other SDGs from regional to global scales. Many water assessment studies are restricted to silo thinking, mostly focusing on water-related consequences, while lacking a quantification of trade-offs and synergies of economic, social, and environmental dimensions. To fill this knowledge gap, we propose a "nexus" approach that integrates a water supply constrained multi-regional input-output (mixed MRIO) model, scenario analysis, and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to quantify the trade-offs and synergies at the sectoral level for the capital region of China, i.e. the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. A total of 120 industrial transition scenarios including nine major industries with high water-intensities and water consumption under current development pathways were developed to facilitate the trade-off and synergy analysis between economic loss, social goals (here, the number of jobs) and environmental protection (with grey water footprint representing water pollution) triggered by water conservation measures. Our simulation results show that an imposition of a tolerable water constraint (a necessary water consumption reduction for regional water stress level to move from severe to moderate) in the region would result in an average economic loss of 68.4 (± 16.0) billion Yuan (1 yuan ≈ 0.158 USD$ in 2012), or 1.3 % of regional GDP, a loss of 1.94 (± 0.18) million jobs (i.e. 3.5 % of the work force) and a reduction of 1.27 (± 0.40) billion m3 or about 2.2% of the regional grey water footprint. A tolerable water rationing in water-intensive sectors such as Agriculture, Food and tobacco processing, Electricity and heating power production and Chemicals would result in the lowest economic and job losses and the largest environmental benefits. Based on MCDA, we selected the 10 best scenarios with regard to their economic, social and environmental performances as references for guiding future water management and suggested industrial transition policies. This integrated approach could be a powerful policy support tool for 1) assessing trade-offs and synergies among multiple criteria and across multiple region-sectors under resource constraints; 2) quantifying the short-term supply-chain effects of different containment measures, and 3) facilitating more insightful evaluation of SDGs at the regional level so as to determine priorities for local governments and practitioners to achieve SDGs. ; Peer reviewed