Westerners held 'responsible for emissions in developing countries'

Western consumers are responsible for large amounts of the greenhouse gas generated by developing countries, a study has shown.

More than 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions associated with the consumption of goods and services in the UK is produced abroad, say researchers.

Some countries, such as Switzerland, are said to "outsource" over half of their CO2 emissions.

The US study found that in 2004, each American citizen accounted for more than two tonnes of consumer-generated carbon dioxide that was produced somewhere else.

For Europeans, the figure was thought to exceed 3.6 tonnes per person.

In excess of 30 per cent of consumption-based emissions were "imported" by the UK, along with France, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria.

Most of the "outsourcing" was to developing countries, especially China.

Study leader Steven Davis, from the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, said: "Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan and the US cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China.

"On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported."

The scientists used published trade data from 2004 to model the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions.

By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, they were able to calculate the net emissions "imported" or "exported" by different countries.

More than a third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to goods and services consumed in many European countries were generated elsewhere, the researchers found.

Switzerland and several other small countries outsourced more emissions than were produced within their national borders.

The US was both a major importer and exporter of trade-linked emissions, said the scientists, writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The net result was the US outsourced about 11 per cent of its total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.

Regional climate policy needed to take account of trade-embodied emissions, not just home-generated CO2 , said the researchers.

Co-author Ken Caldeira, also from the Carnegie Institution, said: "Our analysis of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption in each country just states the facts.

"This could be taken into consideration when developing emissions targets for these countries, but that's a decision for policy-makers. One implication of emissions outsourcing is that a lot of the consumer products that we think of as being relatively carbon-free may in fact be associated with significant carbon dioxide emissions."

Dr Davis added: "Where CO2 emissions occur doesn't matter to the climate system. Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries' emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise."