Global Environmental and Health Implications of International Trade Sanctions Induced by the Russia-Ukraine War

Published in Earth & Environment
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Background

The ongoing geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine has escalated into international trade sanctions on Russia, aiming to hinder its economy and specific economic sectors’ development. Given Russia’s major role as a global energy exporter, a multilateral coalition, including the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK), the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan, has imposed various trade sanction measures targeting Russia’s energy products since February 2022. The imposition of trade sanctions signals disruptions to global energy systems, production, supply chains, and energy security. Global energy markets are interconnected through international trade and socio-economic and environmental impacts are embodied in trade flows. It is essential to investigate the far-reaching implications of the trade sanctions on worldwide regions and their economic sectors.

Methods

We integrate a global general equilibrium model and an atmospheric source-receptor model to explore the environmental, economic, and public-health impacts of varying intensities of trade sanction measures. We also consider potential post-sanction mitigation strategies, such as improved greenhouse gas mitigation policy and shifts in supply chains, to examine how these strategies might accompany and interact with the ongoing trade sanctions.

Key Findings

Our analysis reveals the uneven spillover effects across countries/regions (Fig. 1). While half of the world countries/regions would experience co-benefits in the perspectives of economy and environment, one-fifth (i.e., Russia, China, Central America and Caribbean, and the UK) would face a co-harm situation (e.g., decreased GDP and increased emissions). Furthermore, our results show that the trade sanctions would exacerbate the uneven distributions of environmental and public-health outcomes across countries/regions (Fig. 2). For instance, some less-developed regions (particularly Russia, China, Southeast Asia, and parts of Europe and Central Asia) would face a disproportionate increase in emissions relative to their economic output, and such disparity would widen under the trade sanctions.

Our study also sheds light on the interactive effects of various trade sanction measures and sector-level adaptive activities on global economic and environmental (and thus public-health) systems. We find that reducing trade barriers (e.g., between the EU and its trading partners) would have limited effects on global GDP recovery and emissions mitigation. On the other hand, the interactions among intensive trade sanctions and emission-intensity reduction measures could help alleviate environmental impacts, though it would have minimal effects on economic rebound.

Fig. 1 Global and nation-wide macroeconomic and environmental implications of the international trade sanctions targeting Russia’s energy-related products under different scenarios. a Changes in global CO2 emissions and GDP. b Changes in global sectoral CO2 emissions. c Changes in global air pollutant emissions. d Changes in CO2 emissions and GDP for each country/region. For a and d, the base scenario is no trade sanction measures (TS0), and the changes are expressed as the percentage change before and after the implementation of trade sanction measures. For b and c, the base scenario is TS0, and the changes are expressed as the absolute change before and after the implementation of trade sanction measures.

Fig. 2 Distributions of environmental and public-health outcomes under the TS4 scenario. a Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient for CO2 emissions. b Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient for air pollutant emissions (and associated public-health outcomes). For a and b, the black dashed diagonal represents the line of perfect equality. Under the Lorenz curve, each colored bar represents one country/region. The width of each bar represents the share of each country/region’s economic output, and the height represents the share of each country/region’s produced emissions. Countries/regions are positioned from left to right in ascending order of the share of emissions relative to the share of economic output. c Share of CO2 emissions compared to the share of total economic output for each country/region. d Share of air pollutant emissions compared to the share of total economic output for each country/region. For c and d, countries/regions located on the right of the orange dashed reference line indicate a higher share of economic outputs relative to their share of emissions, and vice versa. 

Conclusions

Our findings underscore the necessity of considering transboundary consequences that extend beyond the regions directly involved in the conflict. Given the persistence of geopolitical tensions, addressing the repercussions is not solely the responsibility of individual countries/regions but demands multilateral collaboration in the long-run. It is recommended to incorporate targeted post-sanction restoration policies, such as adjustments in environmental tariffs and transfers of technological supports, into multilateral trade agreements to help alleviate negative economic and environmental (and associated public-health) impacts on regions indirectly affected by the trade sanctions.

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Environmental Sciences
Physical Sciences > Earth and Environmental Sciences > Environmental Sciences
Environmental Economics
Physical Sciences > Earth and Environmental Sciences > Geography > Integrated Geography > Environmental Economics
Environmental Social Sciences
Physical Sciences > Earth and Environmental Sciences > Environmental Sciences > Environmental Social Sciences

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