Ecologically unequal exchange

The conceptual basis of EUE can be traced in the metabolic rift concept of Karl Marx. This concept described "his concern with how 19th century large-scale industry and agriculture under capitalism combined to impoverish the soil (environment) and the worker through the growing asymmetric exchange of nutrients and other material resources between town and countryside." In the 1940 Raúl Prebisch observed a hierarchy in the global economic system and deterioration of trade for primary product while working for the United Nations Economic Commissions for America Latina. This core-periphery hypothesis rejected the theory of comparative advantage by David Ricardo. The unequal exchange theory, developed among the others by Arghiri Emmanuel, was further built on by Stephen Bunker, who added the ecological aspects of material and energy flows, and by Alf Hornborg, who argued for the assessment of net flows of matter-energy. == Theory ==

Ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) refers to the environmentals aspects of unequal exchange: it is an empirical evidence-based concept that refers to the effect of the structure of international trade under capitalism, in particular to the asymmetric flow of embodied materials and energy from peripheral countries - mainly located in the Global South - to the core developed world. From this perspective, Global South countries tend to serve as a source of raw materials, sink for waste products and places to establish sacrifice zones, perpetuating global inequalities and uneven environmental impacts which disproportionately harm the people in developing countries but serve the productive capacity and the economy of the so-called developed. The EUE theory is based on the world-systems perspective developed by Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi and Andre Gunder Frank. The idea behind world-system theory is that the capitalist-world economy is economically and geographically divided into an affluent core and less developed periphery, and in which surplus value flows from the periphery to the core. The logical result of EUE theory is that the Global North owes to the Global South an ecological debt. The difference between the concepts of EUE and ecological debt is that the EUE theory was developed in academia and the ecological debt by environmental justice and decolonial activists. EUE can be seen as the mechanism and ecological debt as the historical accumulation of debt by rich countries because of EUE. According to Joan Martinez-Alier, the difference between the concept of Unequal Ecological Exchange and "ecological debt" (Martinez-Alier et al. 2014) is formal. While the former EUE originated in academia, Ecological Debt is a concept born within Environmental Justice Organizations in the 1990s, and only later taken up by academics (Martinez-Alier 2002; Warlenius et al. 2015a, 2015b). The concept appeared as a response to the economic debt that was putting pressure on the global South, which is considered a mechanism of the North to exploit Southern peoples and the environment. The main argument was that the South is not simply a debtor to the North, but instead the North has generated an ecological debt towards the South through the long-term exploitation of its natural resources and sinks. It is now a framework that climate justice activists and wider circles refer to. == Calculations ==

One of the most updated calculations of the Ecological Unequal Exchange is constituted by Dorninger et al.'s study, which shows that: • High-income nations are net importers of embodied materials, energy, land, and labor. They depend in large part on extraction from the global south: half of the total materials consumed by high-income countries are extracted from poorer countries. • High-income nations gain a monetary trade surplus via this resource appropriation. • Lower-income nations provide resources but experience monetary trade deficits. The EUE hypothesis is also confirmed by Corsi et al., who show that relations between countries follow dynamics of exploitation and control rather than competition, as it is often assumed. Periphery and semi-periphery present higher environmental intensities, but the burden of such environmental degradation can be directly attributed to global north regions, which acquire and manage the allocation of most environmental resources. Core regions enhance their economic and environmental performance at the national level by exploiting and controlling semi-periphery and periphery regions. They take into consideration the global distribution of ten selected environmental pressures and impacts, as well as value added induced by EU consumption from 1995 to 2019, and show how large parts of all such negative environmental impacts are outsourced to regions outside the EU, while more than 80% of the economic benefits stay within the member countries. They also find an uneven distribution of costs and benefits within the EU. Moreover, they show how between 1995 and 2019 pressures and impacts induced by EU consumption largely decreased within the EU but increased outside its borders. == Implications ==

According to Dorninger et al. their calculations confirm the hypothesis that: According to Hornborg, this means that, because the economic growth model of industrialization requires the appropriation of resources from poorer regions, thinking that poor nations will be able to 'catch-up' is an illusion. Differently from the intra-country inequalities that can be resolved with redistributive policies, the EUE requires a global will to change the rules of the international trade system that create these disparities. == Criticism ==

Peter Somerville, writing for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism, criticized ecological unequal exchange theory as "confused, internally inconsistent, and misrepresents the nature of global extractivism and labour exploitation." == References==