Trade flows link not only goods, but carbon emissions and environmental destruction

We live in an increasingly globalised world, in which trade connects distant environments thousands of miles apart. Yet they way we think about carbon emissions and environmental destruction is stuck in a different era: one where the domestic economy was the dominant driver of ecological change.

Part of the problem is the way we think about the processes of trade and commerce that connects our world. Supply chains look simple in theory, but the reality is far more complex, involving a whole range of actors beyond the key companies involved and the impacts of trade extend far more widely than is often appreciated.

These secondary impacts of trade often aren’t fully understood in supply chain analysis, but as we have seen they can be extremely substantial. Every object we import, there is a three-dimensional embodied cost. First, there is a carbon cost which contributes to climate change and makes extreme weather more likely. Second, there is a local environmental cost, which exacerbates the effects of extreme weather. And finally there is a human cost, as people and communities absorb the impacts absorb the impacts of climate change, driven and intensified by global trade.

So the point then, is this: natural disasters are not natural. Far from it. Rather, when you see footage of floods, droughts, landslides, and houses destroyed by storms, remember that not only does trade contribute to the carbon emissions that make these events more likely, but also the local environmental and human conditions that make them more damaging and deadly. In many cases, therefore, as we import goods, we are effectively exporting disasters to the global South.