Embedded Files
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior learning:
Section 1.1.1 The economy and you, which explains what an economy is and how it is relevant to students’ lives
Section 1.1.2 The embedded economy, which explains the relationship between the economy and society and Earth’s systems
Section 1.3.9 Power in the economy, which explains where power comes from and how it shapes economic relationships
Section 1.2.7 Planetary boundaries, which explains the nine ecological systems that regulate conditions on Earth and their limits, seven of which we are exceeding
Section 7.1.1 Global exchange as a system, which describes global exchange as a system with parts, relationships, functions and emergence
Section 7.1.2 History of global exchanges, which describes how global exchange systems have evolved over time, shaped by changes in technology, power, and environmental factors
Section 7.1.3 What moves across borders? which describes what flows across borders and explains how visible global flows are linked to less visible social and ecological effects
Section S.1 What are systems?, which explains what a system is, the importance of systems boundaries, the difference between open and closed systems, and the importance of systems thinking
Section S.2 Systems thinking patterns, which outlines the core components of systems thinking: distinctions (thing/other), systems (part/whole), relationships (action/reaction), and perspectives (point/view)
Section S.4 Stocks and flows, which explains how inflows and outflows affect stocks of things, leading to behaviour-over-time patterns
Learning objectives:
discuss how the global economy systematically transfers ecological costs from Global North to Global South countries, using evidence from pollution and waste, resource depletion, and climate change
On New Year's Day 2025, a fire tore through Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana, killing two people and destroying thousands of market stalls overnight. Around 30,000 traders lost their livelihoods in hours. Fire officials attributed the speed at which the blaze spread to the sheer volume of flammable clothing packed into the market.
Kantamanto is the largest secondhand clothing market in the world. Every week, around 15 million garments arrive there in compressed bales, shipped from the United Kingdom, the United States, and China. Traders buy the bales without knowing what is inside, then wash, repair, and sell what they can. But as clothing brands have expanded production at lower quality and in faster cycles, the proportion that cannot be sold has risen. Research carried out in 2023 and 2024 found that between 26.5 and 53 tonnes of clothing leave the market as waste every week. Much of it ends up in unofficial dumpsites before washing into the Korle Lagoon and out onto Accra's beaches.
Figure 1. A fire at the Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana in 2025.
(Credit: Or Foundation)
As Section 7.3.1 and Section 7.3.2 showed, profit incentives often push firms towards operating in countries with low labour costs and less labour regulation. The same logic applies to nature. Where environmental protections are limited, firms treat ecosystems as an unpriced source of raw materials and an unpriced place to deposit waste and pollution. The ecological costs fall on the countries and communities with less political and economic power to resist, disproportionately in the Global South. Economists call this pattern ecological debt, where high-income countries have drawn down more than their fair share of the planet's ecological resources, while poorer countries carry the resulting harm.
Where does the Global North's pollution go?
Where does the Global North's pollution go?
When wealthy countries and large firms generate pollution and waste, much of it moves to the Global South, in two ways.
The first is through industrial relocation. From the 1970s onwards, multinational corporations began moving their most polluting production processes to countries with weaker environmental regulations and enforcement. Researchers call these destinations pollution havens. Bangladesh is a well-documented case. Garment factories producing clothing for global brands discharge untreated wastewater containing dyes, acids, and heavy metals directly into the Buriganga and other rivers around Dhaka, despite laws against it. Environmental standards in these factories fall well below those required by law in the Global North countries where the brands have their headquarters.
Figure 2. A pollution researcher taking a water sample from the Buriganga River in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
(Credit: Hossain et al., 2024)
The second way that pollution moves in global exchange is through direct waste export. Many countries in the Global North ship plastic waste, electronic waste, and unsellable clothing to Global South countries, often to places where environmental regulations are weaker. In 2025, Germany exported more than 810,000 tonnes of plastic waste, the largest volume of any country in the world, followed closely by the United Kingdom at 675,000 tonnes. Until 2018 China absorbed a large share of what wealthy countries exported. However, in 2018, it banned almost all imports of foreign plastic waste. These flows of pollution moved to Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia, and other countries mostly in the Global South. These countries generally lack adequate domestic waste processing infrastructure and imports of non-recyclable or contaminated waste add to the burden. Research has linked high levels of microplastics along the Turkish Mediterranean coast directly to waste arriving from European recycling chains. Campaigners in receiving countries have described the practice as waste colonialism.
Electronic waste and unsellable clothing follow the same export route as plastics. Old phones, computers, and appliances are sent to dismantling sites in Ghana, Nigeria, and Pakistan, where workers extract valuable metals by burning cables and breaking components by hand, releasing toxic fumes and heavy metals into surrounding soils and waterways. Clothing that cannot be sold or recycled in the country of origin moves through charity networks and export chains to markets like Kantamanto, where the waste that remains ends up in unofficial dumpsites, washing microplastics into local soils and waterways.
Figure 3. E-waste from countries in the Global North is often shipped to countries in the Global South.
(Credit: European Commission)
Who bears the ecological cost of Global North resource use?
Who bears the ecological cost of Global North resource use?
The global economy runs on physical materials: minerals, soil, water, and biomass. Most of these materials are extracted in the Global South. Section 7.3.1 examined the economic value that leaves with them. This section examines the ecological damage that remains, in three main forms: water depletion, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss.
Agricultural exports
Agricultural exports
Countries that export large volumes of water-intensive crops such as cotton, cut flowers, avocados, and soy send their water abroad with the harvest. Water embedded in exported goods and not returned to the source is called virtual water. Kenya, Ethiopia, and Peru are all net exporters of virtual water, meaning their freshwater resources are being drawn down to supply consumption in wealthier countries.
Lake Naivasha in Kenya (Figure 4) shows what this looks like on the ground. Greenhouses producing cut flowers for export now ring most of the lake's shoreline, visible from space as pale patches pressed against the water's edge. More than 70% of Kenya's cut flower exports grow in this area. The farms draw water directly from the lake for irrigation, exporting an estimated 16 million cubic metres of virtual water every year, most of it to Europe. In already water-stressed regions like this, this depletes the rivers, wetlands, and aquifers that local communities and ecosystems depend on.
These water intensive crops are often cultivated in monocultures that rely heavily on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. This form of intensive agriculture is widely associated with soil degradation, including nutrient depletion, erosion, and declining soil fertility. Over time, this can reduce the long-term productivity of the land. The short-term economic benefits largely flow to importing countries through cheap food and raw materials, while the ecological cost of soil degradation is transferred to the future generations people who will depend on it.
Figure 4. Satellite image of Lake Naivasha, Kenya with flower greenhouses visible on the shore
(Credit: NASA)
Growing these crops at scale often means clearing land that was previously forest. This drives biodiversity loss and species extinction at rates scientists describe as a sixth mass extinction event. Clearing tropical forests for soy and palm oil is a major cause. The regions most affected, including the Amazon, the Congo basin, and the forests of Southeast Asia, are among the most biologically rich on the planet. These ecosystems regulate rainfall, store carbon, and maintain ecological stability at a global scale. Their destruction supplies markets in wealthier countries with raw materials and food.
The communities living within and around these ecosystems bear the most immediate environmental loss. They are often the ones clearing the land themselves. This is not because they don't value it. Global demand for cheap food and raw materials has shaped local economies around farming and logging. For many people, this work is one of the few ways to earn a living.
Extraction for the digital and energy economy
Extraction for the digital and energy economy
Smartphones, computers, wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles all need large quantities of specific minerals: lithium for batteries, cobalt for electric motors, copper for wiring, and rare earth elements for motors and electronics. Most of these minerals come from the Global South. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces around 70% of the world's cobalt. Australia and Chile are the largest producers of lithium today, but the largest lithium reserves, meaning the amount still in the ground and not yet extracted, lie in the Andes region of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. Much of the world's nickel comes from Indonesia.
The communities living near these mines suffer serious environmental damage. In the DRC, mining has contaminated local rivers and water sources with acidic industrial waste, making the water unsafe to drink, farm with, or use for animals. In Chile's Atacama Desert, lithium mining pumps large volumes of salty water to the surface and leaves it to evaporate in open pools. This has caused a permanent loss of groundwater, the disappearance of lagoons, and a decline in vegetation. The Atacameño peoples, who depend on the region's scarce water to survive, have watched their land degrade.
Figure 5. Lithium evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert in Chile
(Credit: freedom_wanted, licensed from Adobe Stock)
Demand for several of these minerals, especially lithium, cobalt, and copper, is rising fastest because of the shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles. Extracting these minerals causes real ecological damage wherever it happens. It destroys land and habitats, pollutes water, and consumes a finite resource that cannot support this level of extraction forever.
The income from finished batteries, motors, and turbines is captured elsewhere. Ore from the DRC or Chile is typically exported in raw form, because the factories that refine and process it are mainly located in China. The DRC and Chile carry the ecological cost of extraction. The economic value moves on to be captured by others. As Section 7.1.2 and Section 7.3.1 discussed, this pattern of raw materials flowing out and finished value flowing back has shaped global exchange for centuries. The shift to renewable energy continues the pattern.
Who pays for climate change?
Who pays for climate change?
The greenhouse gases now heating the planet have built up over more than two centuries of industrial production, mostly in the Global North. Carbon dioxide (CO2) stays in the atmosphere and keeps trapping heat for centuries. Today's climate change is shaped by emissions from a hundred years ago just as much as by emissions from this year. This is why looking at historical, cumulative emissions shows who has contributed most to the warming happening today.
Figure 6 shows each country's share of all CO2 emitted since 1751. Between 1751 and 2017, the United States and the European Union together produced around 47% of the global total. The entire continent of Africa produced around 3%. The figure groups the European Union's members together, including the United Kingdom, because the UK was part of the EU for almost all of this period. This detail matters. The UK was the world's first industrialised nation. From the start of the Industrial Revolution until the early 1880s, the UK alone produced more than half of all cumulative CO2 emissions worldwide.
The countries that contributed least to historical CO2 emissions are suffering the most severe consequences today. Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of cumulative global emissions. In 2022, monsoon floods submerged a third of the country, killed more than 1,700 people, and caused over 30 billion US dollars in damage. The Sahel region of Africa faces intensifying droughts caused by rising temperatures that its own emissions did not produce. Countries in the Pacific are losing territory permanently to rising seas, pushed up by emissions produced mainly elsewhere.
These are not isolated cases. Figure 7 shows this pattern across the world, using a vulnerability index that measures climate impacts on food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat, and infrastructure. The darkest areas on the map, showing the highest vulnerability, are concentrated across Africa, South Asia, and parts of Central America, the same regions responsible for only a small share of the emissions shown in Figure 6.
Figure 7. Countries least responsible for climate change are bearing the greatest harm.
(Credit: Global Inequality)
This gap between who caused climate change and who suffers its consequences is one form of ecological debt. Countries that industrialised first have used up most of the atmosphere's safe capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. Countries that industrialise later have far less capacity left to use. This means that they face much tighter ecological limits than wealthy countries ever faced.
International climate negotiations have tried to address this gap. At COP27 in 2022, governments agreed to create the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its purpose is to help lower-income countries adapt to climate change and recover from its damage. Researchers estimate that developing countries will need around $395 billion a year by 2025 to cope with climate-related loss and damage. By March 2026, wealthy countries had pledged around $822 million to the fund. This covers about 0.2% of that annual need.
Some economists think ecological debt calls for reparations, not just aid. Reparations means paying back a historical wrong, not just helping with a current problem. Economist Franklin Obeng-Odoom argues that centuries of resource extraction from Africa created this debt. He says the response should be direct repayment for that extraction.
Climate change also accelerates biodiversity loss. This adds to the ecological costs that regions already absorb from resource extraction and waste produced by wealthier countries. For example, coral reefs across the tropics are bleaching as ocean temperatures rise. This threatens the food security and livelihoods of coastal communities around the world, especially in the Global South.
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Section 7.3.1 and Section 7.3.2 showed that economic value and labour moves from Global South to Global North. This section shows that ecological costs move in the opposite direction. This pattern reflects the same unequal power dynamics that shape wages, prices, and the terms of trade across this entire Subtopic 7.3.
Activity 7.3.3
Activity 7.3.3
Concept: Systems, power
Skills: Research skills (information literacy), Thinking skills (critical thinking, transfer)
Time: varies, depending on option
Type: Individual, pairs, or small group
Option 1: Data interpretation on ecological debt from CO2 emissions
Time: 30 minutes
This section describes ecological debt, the pattern where Global North countries draw down more than their fair share of the planet's ecological capacity, while Global South carry the resulting cost. Climate change is one form of this debt.
Researchers measure it using a planetary boundary, the level of atmospheric CO2, set at 350 parts per million (ppm), that scientists consider safe for a stable climate. A country's fair share is the amount of that safe capacity it could use without taking more than its proportionate part. Comparing a country's actual emissions to its fair share shows how far it has overshot that limit.
Find the interactive map titled ‘Responsibility for climate breakdown’ at the Global Inequality Project or examine the same embedded map in Figure 8.
Figure 8. Countries least responsible for climate change are bearing the greatest harm.
(Credit: Global Inequality)
Part 1: General analysis
Use a data interpretation strategy suggested by your teacher or your course to explore the responsibility map. If you do not have a data interpretation strategy, click on the arrow to get some question prompts.
What is the title of the data? What does it measure? Clarify any questions you have about it.
Look closely at the legend. What do the colours represent? The colour bands are built around a multiple of each country's fair share, not its raw share of global emissions.
Identify one country with very high overshoot of its fair share of CO2 emissions. Identify one country with no overshoot. Give an approximate figure for each. Use the legend, or hover over the country if you have access to the digital map.
Is there a regional pattern in the data? Which parts of the world show the highest overshoot? Which show little or none?
Part 2: Deeper thinking
What story does the regional pattern from Part 1 seem to tell, and what does this have to do with ecological debt? Use the information from this section, along with Figure 7 and Figure 8 to explain.
Earlier in this section, a treemap showed the same underlying data (which countries have emitted the most CO2 historically), sized by each country's share of the global total. This map shows the same countries differently, as an overshoot ratio against a fair share. What does each type of map draw attention to? What does each leave out? Which one makes a stronger argument, and why?
Part 2: Deeper thinking
What story does the regional pattern from Part 1 seem to tell, and what does this have to do with ecological debt? Use the information from this section, along with Figure 7 and Figure 8 to explain.
Earlier in this section, a treemap showed the same underlying data (which countries have emitted the most CO2 historically), sized by each country's share of the global total. This map shows the same countries differently, as an overshoot ratio against a fair share. What does each type of map draw attention to? What does each leave out? Which one makes a stronger argument, and why?
Note: Questions 1 and 3 have reasonably clear answers, provided in the accordion below. Question 2 is more open-ended, though the accordion offers some points a strong response might include.
The regional pattern shows a clear inverse relationship. Figure 7 and Figure 8 shows that countries with high historical responsibility for carbon emissions, mostly in North America and Europe, tend to have low vulnerability to climate change. Figure 9 shows that countries with very low historical responsibility, mostly across Africa and South Asia, tend to face the highest levels of vulnerability. The countries that caused the problem are largely protected from its worst consequences. The countries that contributed least are most exposed.
This pattern is what the concept of ecological debt describes. Industrialised countries have already used up a large share of the atmosphere's safe capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. This leaves less room for other countries to develop without breaching the same safe limits. It has also imposed real costs on countries that did not cause the problem. Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of cumulative global emissions. In 2022, it suffered over 30 billion US dollars in damage from severe floods. Economists who use the concept of ecological debt argue that this creates a moral and economic obligation. Wealthy countries should compensate those who are suffering the consequences of a crisis they did little to cause. This is similar to how someone who damages another person's property has a responsibility to pay for repairs.
The treemap shows scale directly. The size of each rectangle makes it easy to see that the US and EU together account for roughly half of all historical emissions. But it does not account for population, so a small country with high emissions per person can look insignificant. The fair-share map does the opposite. It accounts for population and a safe global limit, so it makes a more direct argument about fairness. But the colour-coded ratio is more abstract. A small country with a small population and high emissions per person can appear as dark red as the United States, even though its total historical contribution is far smaller. Neither map is more accurate than the other. Each one is built to highlight a different part of the same story.
Option 2: Whose transition is it?
Time: 20 minutes
The section describes the energy transition, the global shift away from fossil fuels towards wind, solar, and electric vehicles, as necessary for reducing emissions, but also dependent on the same extractive patterns that have shaped global exchangefor centuries.
Read the following two perspectives, then complete the tasks below.
Perspective A — an Atacameño community leader in Chile: ‘Our community has lived in this desert for thousands of years. The salt flat is the source of our water, our food, and our culture. For decades, lithium companies have been pumping our water to the surface and leaving it to evaporate. The aquifer that stores the water underground is permanently losing water. Lagoons that our grandparents knew are gone. We are being asked to sacrifice our land and our way of life so that people in wealthy countries can drive electric cars.’
Perspective B — a European electric vehicle manufacturer: ‘The transition to electric vehicles is essential to reducing global carbon emissions. Without lithium, we cannot produce the batteries that make this possible. We work with our suppliers to improve environmental and social standards across the supply chain, and we are committed to making the transition as sustainable as possible.’
What concern does Perspective A raise about who bears the ecological cost of the energy transition?
Perspective B acknowledges the importance of lithium, but focuses on improving supply chain standards. What does Perspective A suggest is missing from this response?
The section states that the shift to renewable energy depends on the same pattern that has shaped global exchange for centuries: raw materials flow out from the Global South, while the income they generate is captured by the Global North, and ecological damage is often left behind. Using both perspectives and what you have read in the section, explain in two or three sentences what this means and why it matters.
Click on the arrow to see sample responses, but give it a go yourself first!
Perspective A raises the concern that the ecological costs of lithium extraction (groundwater depletion, the loss of lagoons, and the degradation of land) are being borne by the Atacameño community, while the benefits of the transition (cleaner transport, lower emissions) flow primarily to wealthy countries elsewhere.
Perspective A suggests that improving standards within the existing system is not enough if the fundamental structure remains the same, where communities in the Global South absorb ecological costs so that consumers in the Global North can benefit. Perspective B does not address the question of who should decide whether mining happens at all.
The energy transition requires minerals that are concentrated in the Global South. If those minerals are extracted under conditions that harm local communities and ecosystems, with most of the income and finished products flowing to wealthier countries, then the transition follows the same unequal structure as earlier periods of resource extraction, even though it is intended to protect the planet.
Ideas for longer activities and projects are listed in Subtopic 7.5
Checking for understanding
Checking for understanding
Coming soon!
Further exploration
Further exploration
Global Inequality Project - Created by Jason Hickel and colleagues, this site makes research and data on unequal exchange accessible to a wider audience. It includes interactive charts on wage gaps, material flows, and the scale of value drain between Global South and Global North over time. Difficulty level: medium
Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions? - article from Our World in Data exploring which countries and regions have contributed most to global CO2 emissions since 1751, and how responsibility for climate change compares between historical and current emitters.
Photos: Bangladesh’s garment-driven economic boom killing rivers - a photo essay from Al Jazeera on industrial pollution in Dhaka's Buriganga river, once a source of drinking water and food, now heavily contaminated by untreated wastewater from nearby garment factories. Difficulty level: easy
Are Congolese people paying the price for the energy transition? Pollution & human rights in DRC - a short investigative video from Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) documenting toxic pollution from copper and cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, based on interviews with 144 residents living near the world's largest mines and analysis of corporate environmental documents. Difficulty level: easy
Water Footprint Calculator - an interactive tool that lets you calculate your own water footprint, including the tap water you use directly and the virtual water embedded in your food, energy, and everyday purchases. Helps students understand how water can be embedded in products that move through global exchange. Difficulty level: easy
Sources
Sources
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Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. (2026). Funding. https://www.frld.org/funding
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Tavoni, M., Andreoni, P., Calcaterra, M., Calliari, E., Deubelli-Hwang, T., Mechler, R., Hochrainer-Stigler, S., & Wenz, L. (2024). Economic quantification of Loss and Damage funding needs. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 5, 411–413. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00565-7
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Terminology
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