This article applies a combined inputoutput and life cycle inventory (LCI) method to the calculation of emissions and material requirements of the Czech economy in 2003. The main focus is on materials and emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic. Emissions and material extraction avoided due to imports are calculated according to an inputoutput approach that assumes the same production technology for imports as for domestic production. Because not all products are provided by the domestic economy, the LCI data are incorporated into the monetary inputoutput model. The results show that incorporating the LCI data into an inputoutput model is reasonable. The emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic are comparable to the domestic emissions. We compare the economy-wide material flow indicators, such as direct material input, domestic material consumption, and physical trade balance, to their raw material equivalents. The results of our calculation show that the Czech Republic exerts environmental pressure on the environment in other countries through international trade. We argue that raw material equivalents should be used to express the flows across national boundaries. Furthermore, we recommend a raw material consumption indicator for international comparisons.

This article deals with the economy-wide material flows in the Czech Republic in 1990-2006. It presents in brief the overall trends of the material flow indicators in 1990-2002. The major part of the article is focused on the years 2002-2006, which immediately preceded and followed the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union in 2004. It is shown that this accession had quite a significant impact on the volume and character of the material flows of the Czech Republic. The accession was beneficial from an economic point of view, as it allowed for an increased supply of materials needed for economic growth. Furthermore, it was accompanied by an improvement in the efficiency of material transformation into economic output. From an environmental and broader sustainability point of view, however, this accession brought about some controversial outcomes. There was a significant increase in the net export of environmental pressure, on one hand, and an increase in net additions to the physical stock of the economy, on the other. Although the former is controversial from the viewpoint of equity in sharing area and resources, the latter places an additional burden on future generations because all physical stocks will turn into waste and emissions at some point, when their life span expires.

If environmental footprint attributable to various consumption patterns are evaluated, monetary transactions in the environmentally-extended input-output analysis need to be linked to household-specific expenditures. However, while the former are recorded in basic prices, the latter is typically recorded in purchaser's prices, adding a commodity tax and margins to basic prices. Product homogeneity assumption -inherent to input-output analysis - implies that two identical products sold to consumers with different retail trade margins are responsible for different footprints. In this paper we investigate how footprint attributable to Food and Goods is affected across household income classes if we relax the homogeneity assumption and assume different allocations of retail trade margins across the income classes. While different allocations affect footprints of the two Consumption groups significantly, in particular in the highest deciles, the effect on total footprint is very small, up to 10% even for two extreme cases of margins allocation.

The employment impacts of the transition to a post-carbon economy are gaining increasing attention. The post-carbon transition implies fundamental changes in the economy followed by significant changes in the structure of labour demand. Industries with the highest carbon footprint are of utmost importance because of the large expected changes in supply chain structures forced by decarbonisation. The power industry is a crucial component of the transition since its decarbonisation can also help other sectors (such as transportation) switch to cleaner energy fuels. Renewable energy sources are promising technologies that could significantly help foster transition in the energy sector and to provide energy with almost zero greenhouse gas emissions. Restructuring away from fossil fuels will bring about associated job losses in non-renewable energy sectors together with job gains in the renewable energy ones. Building energy infrastructure with a significantly higher share of renewables will also require significant capital investments in new facilities, possibly further fostering employment. Understanding the overall net effects on employment (i.e. job gains vs. job losses) would help inform transition policies in order to design policies guided not only by environment and climate but also by social considerations. To estimate the net effects on employment related to the increasing share of renewable energy, we develop a forward-looking multi-regional input-output model that takes into account the labour demand associated with capital investments in renewable energy infrastructure, separately from operation and maintenance. Modelling capital formation separately allows for a more precise assessment of the changes in labour demand needed to deal with the transition and can better inform related adaptation policies. The modelling consists of gradually replacing the production of electricity from non-renewable energy sources with production from renewables by comparing the effects of two scenarios in five-year intervals until 2050. The model focuses on changes in the European Union (EU) plus the United Kingdom (UK) and shows the net effects on the number of jobs by skill level (low-, medium- and high-skilled) and gender, by industry group and by country.

International trade disconnects distant consumers from impacts on ecosystem services embodied in agricultural production. In this communication, we present a first attempt to estimate the value of ecosystem services lost due to agricultural activities embodied in global trade. We report ecosystem services footprint for 49 countries and world regions based on a multi-regional input-output analysis. We found that international trade embodies a value of $3.7 trillion per year of ecosystem services lost due to agricultural activities. Consumption in China, United States and Middle East induce the highest absolute loss of value of ecosystem services. The main exporters include Asia and Pacific, Indonesia and Africa. The largest trade flow was identified between the Asia and Pacific region and Western Europe with an embodied value of ecosystem services of $397 billion per year. Quantification of the ecosystem services lost and embodied in international trade emphasizes the impacts of consumption as an important driver of ecosystem services loss. Making the ecosystem services value embodied in trade visible can stimulate and contribute to the design of strategies to reduce the impact of consumption and thus to lightening our footprint on natural ecosystems. Keywordsecosystem services; footprint; economic value; international trade; cropland; multi-regional input-output analysis; MRIO.

The aim of this article is to quantify the drivers for the changes in raw material consumption (domestic material consumption expressed in the form of all materials extracted and used in the production phase) in terms of technology, which refers to the concept of sustainable production; the product structure of final demand, which refers to the concept of sustainable consumption; and the volume of final demand, which is related to economic growth. We also aim to determine to what extent the technological development and a shift in product structure of the final demand compensate for the growth in final consumption volume. Therefore, we apply structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to the change in raw material consumption (RMC) of the Czech Republic between 2000 and 2007. To present the study in a broader context, we also show other material flow indicators for the Czech Republic for 2000 and 2007. Our findings of SDA show that final demand structure has a very limited effect on the change in material flows. The rapid change in final demand volume was not compensated for crude oil, metal ores, construction materials, food crops, and timber. For the material category of non-iron metal ores, even the change in technology contributes to an increase in material flows. The largest relative increases are reported for non-iron metal ores (38%) and construction materials (30%). The main changes in material flows related to the Czech Republic are driven by exports and enabled by imports, the main source of these increased material flows. This emphasizes the increasing role of international trade.

The article presents a method for the calculation of selected economy-wide material flow indicators (namely, direct material input [DMI] and raw material input [RMI]) for economic sectors. Whereas sectoral DMI was calculated using direct data from statistics, we applied a concept of total flows and a hybrid input-output life cycle assessment method to calculate sectoral RMI. We calculated the indicators for the Czech Republic for 2000-2011. We argue that DMI of economic sectors can be used for policies aiming at decreasing the direct input of extracted raw materials, and imported raw materials and products, whereas sectoral RMI can be better used for justifying support for or weakening the role of individual sectors within the economy. High-input material flows are associated in the Czech Republic with the extractive industries (agriculture and forestry, the mining of fossil fuels [FFs], other types of mining, and quarrying), with several manufacturing industries (manufacturing of beverages, basic metals, motor vehicles or electricity, and gas and steam supply) and with construction. Viable options for reducing inputs of agricultural biomass include changes in people's diet toward a lower amount of animal-based food and a decrease in the wasting of food. For FFs, one should think of changing the structure of total primary energy supply toward cleaner gaseous and renewable energy sources, innovations in transportation systems, and improvements in overall energy efficiency. For metal ores, viable options include technological changes leading to smaller and lighter products, as well as consistent recycling and use of secondary metals.

Agriculture is one of the most important sources of biomass for human society but increasingly contributes to anthropogenic degradation of ecosystems through negative impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, climate change, and ecosystem services. Here we estimate NPP agricultural footprint, that is, the level of appropriation of potential net primary production (NPP) by global cropland and human-made pastures from the consumer responsibility (footprint) perspective and reveal the role of international trade. To quantify the NPP agricultural footprint, we utilize environmentally extended multi-regional input-output analysis to attribute the terrestrial potential NPP altered by global cropland and human-made pastures to the final consumers responsible for pulling the supply chains. We identify the NPP of geographically specific cropland area of 186 agricultural crops in 236 countries and we track each of those crops through the global web of international trade and supply chains to the point of final consumption. We show that human society appropriates 20% (13 petagrams of carbon per year) of global potential net primary production by the transformation of natural ecosystems into cropland and human-made pastures. International trade accounts for 23% of global NPP footprint of agriculture. While the two and half billion people living in China and India (the two countries with lowest NPP agricultural footprint per capita) appropriate about 16% of the global NPP agricultural footprint of cropland and human-made pastures, the same share is appropriated by only 360 million people living in countries with the highest per capita footprint.