Peak of SO2 Emissions Embodied in International Trade: Patterns, Drivers and Implications

International trade links countries consuming goods and services to those where products and related SO2 pollution are produced, thereby affecting national mitigation responsibilities. This study combined accounting and decomposition techniques to investigate the patterns and drivers of SO2 emissions embodied in international trade from 1995 to 2015 and quantified the contribution of each country or region on the production and consumption sides. The global embodied emissions increased at an accelerated rate before the global financial crisis and peaked at 51.3 Mt in 2008, followed by a fluctuating decline from 2008 to 2015. Spatially, the transfers of SO2 emissions tended to flow from developed countries to less developed ones, but the trend has weakened after the financial crisis. Our decomposition analysis suggests that the energy and production system transitions and the slowdown in international trade jointly accounted for the peak and decline in emissions. Our contribution analysis indicates that developing economies have contributed to decreased emissions due to their recent efforts in production technology upgrading, energy efficiency improvement and energy structure optimization. The influence of developed economies on emissions decreased due to their reduced dependency on imports. Targeted policy methods are provided from the production and consumption perspectives for developing and developed economies, respectively.