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Abstract
In order to identify ecological relationships of participating countries in the transfer system of ecological capital embodied in global trade, this paper takes the international trade of China and its partners from 2002 to 2017 as a case, and uses the ecological footprint (EF) measured by the optimized product land-use matrix (PLUM) method to quantify ecological capital for the value of macro-ecological resources, then uses the ecological network analysis (ENA) method to construct a complete transfer network of trade-embodied ecological capital and uses a utility analysis to identify ecological relationships between trading countries. Our results show that: (1) Throughout the study period, competition relationships with 61% dominated in the network, and the countries that have a pair-wise competition relationship with China are mainly located in central and western Europe, northeastern Europe, North America, southern Asia and eastern Asia. (2) Indirect utility determines the dominant ecological relationship in system, and it mainly converts dominant ecological relationships from control to competition by transforming exploit into competition. (3) China is looking to creating a more mutually beneficial trading environment at the expense of its own interests. (4) A global crisis event is likely to result in the control of ecological capital in more countries, and in its aftermath, the world is likely to be in a highly competitive environment. Reducing ecological capital consumption by improving energy efficiency and optimizing the global trading environment into a trading system dominated by mutualism relationships can be effective ways for countries around the world to achieve sustainable development post-COVID-19 crisis.
Highlights
With increasingly accelerated development of economic globalization and trade liberalization, international trade has become the most important method of economic development
This paper used the trade between China and its trading partners as a case to study the changes in the ecological relationship between countries over time
In terms of the proportion of ecological relationships per year, it can be seen that the proportion of ecological relationships between China and its trading partners changed dramatically before and after the 2008 global financial crisis, i.e., the proportion of control relationships surged from 13.16%
Summary
With increasingly accelerated development of economic globalization and trade liberalization, international trade has become the most important method of economic development. Most scholars usually study the economic benefits brought by international trade, but ignore the transfer of ecological capital embodied in trade. Because of the increasing separation of production and consumption between countries, it is increasingly necessary to study trade-embodied ecological capital transfer [1,2]. Researches on ecological capital embodied in international trade use two methods. The complex network method is used to study the direct transfer of ecological capital embodied in trade [1,6]. Ecological network analysis (ENA) is an effective method to identify the Sustainability 2021, 13, 10020.
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