Internal and external sources of environmental impacts: a comparative analysis of the EU with other nation groupings

Abstract

We systematically analyze the driving forces behind a diversity of national environmental impacts (the “ecological footprint,” and the emissions of ozone depleting substances, carbon dioxide, and methane), with an eye toward determining whether the patterns in European Union (EU) nations are characteristically different from other nations. We use the STIRPAT model, a stochastic version of the IPAT model, as our analytic tool. STIRPAT allows for a more precise specification of the relationship between driving forces and impacts than other widely used modeling techniques. We find that national environmental impacts of all types are proportional to population size, indicating that population is a major driving force of environmental change. We find that per capita GDP monotonically increases all types of impacts examined, except the emission of ozone depleting substances, where emissions begin to drop as per capita GDP moves beyond approximately US$ 13,000. Overall, the results regarding affluence suggest that development is likely to further exacerbate, rather than alleviate, environmental problems. We also find that EU nations differ from other nations in methane emissions and in ecological footprints (specifically the arable land component of the footprint). EU nations have lower methane emissions and higher footprints than other nations, controlling for other factors. These results suggest that EU nations externalize their environmental impacts, by importing resources. Show more