Committed to achieving carbon neutrality by mid-century, South America faces unique challenges in carbon mitigation due to its distinct socio-economic, technological, and institutional backgrounds compared to developed and other developing economies. Previous research on South America's carbon emissions has limited country and sector coverage and typically adopts a top-down approach that focuses on the overall emissions of an economy, neglecting individual energy sources and emission sectors. Therefore, this paper compiles a comprehensive inventory of CO2 emissions for South American countries based on a meticulous bottom-up approach and multi-source data integration, followed by a thorough analysis of their temporal evolution patterns and the driving forces behind them. Between 2010 and 2020, South America's overall emissions peaked in 2014 at 1092.3 Mt., led by emissions from oil consumption and from the transport and electricity sectors, and dropped to 865.6 Mt. in 2020, due to the economic fluctuations and COVID-19. Specifically, Brazil was the largest emitter, Chile experienced the most significant increase in emissions, and Paraguay recorded the highest emission growth rate. Generally, expanding population was constant driver of emission growth. High energy intensity led to significant emission increases in Brazil and Ecuador, while elevated carbon intensity was the main driver in Argentina. Energy structure changes played a positive role in most countries to different extents (e.g., much more significant in Brazil than in Chile) but aggrevated emissions in Paraguay and Guyana. Therefore, carbon mitigation strategies should be tailored to each country's unique national circumstances.

Given the increasing influence of international trade on regional land use, this paper presents a comprehensive overview of forest land use across global supply chains by means of embodiment accounting based on EXIOBASE 3 database, with a specific focus on the climate vulnerability and adaptation readiness of supply chain agents. Globally, 2268.3 million hectares (Mha) of forest land was exploited for forestry in 2015, while 30% was associated with export production, mainly sourced from Russia, Canada, Africa, South America and tropical and subtropical Asia-Pacific and linked to the final consumption of developed (e.g. the EU, the USA and Japan) and emerging (e.g. China and India) economies. During 2000–2015, forest land exploited in climate-vulnerable regions rose to 689.4 Mha, contributing over 50% of the overall increase in global forest land exploitation. Forest land use displaced from China and India to these regions increased by 2.6 and 3.3 times, respectively, due to escalating imports from tropics and subtropics (especially Asia-Pacific), where the readiness to take adaptation actions was also low. For the EU and the USA, virtual forest land use sourced from these regions remained large in absolute magnitude despite decreasing import volume. Therefore, transnational mutual efforts are needed to secure local forestry of climate-vulnerable regions, improve the resilience of global supply chains and mitigate negative influence on other sustainable development goals supported by forest ecosystems.

The international trade of oil/gas-implicated commodities could potentially jeopardize global methane mitiga-tion targets when exporting countries have loose or even no methane regulations. Therefore, this paper con-structs a demand-driven impacts model to uncover the impact of global consumption and international trade on regional oil and gas methane emissions in 2014. It's estimated that more than three-fifths of global oil & gas methane emissions are embodied in international commodity trade (e.g., petroleum, chemicals), primarily from large oil and gas suppliers (e.g., Russia, Nigeria and Iran) to large consuming economies (e.g., China, Japan and USA). Notably, more than three quarters of oil & gas methane emissions embodied in EU's final consumption occurs in other regions. Our results could facilitate targeted demand-side mitigation strategies (e.g., labeling low -emission products, shifting to a circular bio-economy) to complement supply-side efforts, especially considering the relatively loose supply-side methane regulations on oil and gas sectors in large exporting regions.

The continued loss of unfragmented intact forest landscapes (IFLs) despite numerous global conservation initiatives indicates the need for improved knowledge of proximate and underlying drivers. Yet the role of non-agricultural activities in forest degradation and fragmentation has not received adequate attention. We focus on IFL loss caused by various economic activities and investigate the influence of global consumption and trade via the multi-regional input-output model. For IFL loss associated with the 2014 world economy, over 60% was related to final consumption of non-agricultural products. More than one-third of IFL loss was linked to export, primarily from Russia, Canada, and tropical regions to mainland China, the EU, and the United States. Of IFL loss associated with export, 51% and 26% was directly caused by logging and mining or energy extraction, respectively. The dispersed nature of IFL loss drivers and their indirect links to individual final consumers call for stronger government engagement and supply chain interventions.

Considering the globalization of forest land use and the influence of China’s socio-economic process on forest resources, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of China’s forest land use change in the globalized world economy during 2000–2011, by means of embodiment accounting based on EXIOBASE3 database. External demand, primarily from USA, EU, Japan and rest of Asia-Pacific, accounts for 20−45% of China’s direct forest land use, meanwhile, increasing forest land use (50−60%) is displaced abroad, mainly to Russia (20−30%), America, Africa and rest of Asia-Pacific. Overall, China is a net importer of virtual forest land use due to large imports through forest products (e.g., wood, paper and pulp), while highly-processed non-forest products also contribute a dominant and increasing share in total exports. Consequently, in the trade with USA, Japan and many European countries, China is the net exporter of virtual forest land use, though it is the net importer of forest products as revealed by conventional monetary trade accounting, highlighting the necessity of the inclusive embodiment accounting to trace land use to actual final products. Regarding final consumption, virtual forest land use of rural households only reaches 65–75% that of urban households, due to large disparities in the consumption of non-forest products. Per capita virtual forest land use of the rural and urban poorest groups are only 1/5 and 1/6 of the nation’s richest group, respectively. Therefore, transnational cooperation is required to promote sustainable forest management worldwide. China should also prepare for growing demand for forest land and reduce associated environmental inequality in the process of urbanization and poverty alleviation.

As an extension of our previous study on natural gas use in world economy (Kan et al., Energy Policy 124 (2019) 215–225), this paper explores policy implications based on a time series analysis uncovering the evolution of natural gas use embodied in global supply chains during 2000-2011. Due to increasing gas supply from gas-rich regions to gas-scarce regions and outsourcing of energy-intensive industries, trade imbalance of embodied natural gas is intensifying globally, corresponding to strengthening gas resource relocation and environmental stress shift. Regarding trade patterns, EU and Russia remain the leading (net) importer and exporter of embodied gas, respectively. And global trade relations are diversifying over time, with more suppliers and recipients joining the international trade. Based on the New Policies Scenario provided by IEA, a long term forecast of embodied gas use illustrates need to prepare for a world with changing energy mix, with respect to growing availability of low-cost natural gas and robust demand growth coming from emerging economies, especially China, who is struggling to fight against air pollution through coal-to-gas switch. Potential room to expand natural gas utilization is also targeted, and the expansion requires coordination of all the agents in global supply chains.

Rapid income growth and urbanization have led to significant changes in food consumption patterns in China. The impact of dietary changes is likely to increase agricultural land demand for food provision. This study investigates the changes in three types of agricultural land requirements for urban and rural residents in China using embodied land use intensities. Our results indicate that total per capita cultivated land requirement of rural residents decreased by 24.3%, from 1984 to 1501 m2 during the study period, while total per capita cultivated land requirement for urban residents decreased by 25.1%, from 2736 to 2049 m2. Total per capita pasture land requirement of rural residents increased by 13.6%, from 543 to 617 m2, while total per capita pasture land requirement of urban residents decreased by 31.4%, from 2991 to 2053 m2. Total per capita forest land requirement of rural residents increased by 31.0%, from 45 to 59 m2, while total per capita forest land requirement of urban residents decreased by 8.4%, from 164 to 150 m2. Our study provides clear implications about the linkages between dietary change and agricultural land demand. Our results imply that without sufficient improvement in production efficiency, pressures posed by dietary change on land resources related to the provision of food will remain high in the future.

As the world is smoothing the transition towards a low-carbon energy structure, natural gas has occupied a critical position in global energy supply. Also, globalization has catalyzed ever-increasing indirect energy flows in international trade. In order to present a comprehensive overview of natural gas use in globalized economy, this paper applies the systems multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis to track natural gas use from primary suppliers to final consumers via the links by producers in the world economy, supported by typical statistics for the year of 2011. Natural gas embodied in international trade is revealed amounting to 2722.1 bcm, in magnitude up to 90% of total gas extraction for energy use, indicating the intensive relocation of gas use by trade. 83% of traded embodied natural gas is associated with intermediate trade, mainly from leading primary suppliers, including Russia, USA and Western Asia, to dominant final consumers, like USA, EU27 and East Asia. Significant differences are found between direct and embodied natural gas flows. Consumption-based resource efficiency can break the illusion of efficiency improvements, and trade imbalance in terms of gas use can be opposite to the trade imbalance in conventional monetary terms. This paper has constructed a comprehensive analytical framework to trace natural gas flows in globalized economy for the first time, aiming to provide new insights for policy making.

Decoupling indicators are widely used to understand links between economic growth and energy use. However, traditional decoupling analyses mostly focus on domestic energy consumption (i.e., the production-based principle) and neglect off-site energy use across global supply chains to satisfy an economy's final consumption (i.e., the consumption-based principle). Moreover, analyses for total primary energy conceal an economy's preference for different energy sources. Therefore, this paper evaluates decoupling states of GDP from all types of primary energy use under consumption-based principle, for world economy and eight typical economies during 2000-2011. Regarding total primary energy, world economy witnessed weak decoupling in most years, and most economies studied (e.g., USA, Japan and China) achieved decoupling initially but performed negative decoupling finally. For EU, USA, Japan, Russia and India, production-based decoupling performances were generally better than consumption-based ones. Decoupling phenomena detected under production-based principle even became coupling or negative decoupling under consumption-based principle in some cases. As for each energy source, world economy decoupled from oil use, but still coupled with coal use, and gradually showed a trend to couple with natural gas and renewables use. Different energy sources showed distinct decoupling degrees from GDP, affected by individual embodied energy requirement structure. This paper uncovers potential energy de coupling delusions to deepen the understanding of relationships between energy use and economic growth.