Environmental factors in trade during the great transformation: advancing the geographical coverage before 1950

John Brolin and Astrid Kander

Journal of Global History, 2020, vol. 15, issue 2, 245-267

Abstract: In the study of trade-embedded environmental factors (land, water, energy, or material flows), three conflicting interpretations prevail concerning what happened before 1950. The ‘great specialization’ narrative argues that trade served to lighten pressure on the environment by redistributing environmental services from where they were abundant to where they were scarce. The ‘great divergence’ sees an exploitative transfer from poor countries to rich and powerful ones or an environmental load displacement from rich to poor. The ‘great acceleration’ dismisses flows as insignificant either way. We review long-term national studies and find an almost exclusive focus on developed countries, mostly European and especially the UK, where more systematic studies tend to support ‘specialization’ and/or ‘acceleration’. By contrast, more qualitative studies on individual exports from developing countries often support ‘divergence’, but, since imports are excluded by design, this can never be demonstrated. We propose widening the geographical scope of long-term national studies beyond Europe and extending existing studies with bilateral trade, and suggest that ‘developing country’ trade be quantified according to existing methods of environmental accounting.

Date: 2020
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