Greenhouse gas emissions and natural resources use by the world economy: Ecological input–output modeling

For the world economy as a biophysical network associated with financial links, an ecological endowment inventory and corresponding ecological input–output modeling are presented to investigate the greenhouse gas emissions and natural resources use in 2000. A forty-sector global economic input–output table is constructed through an integration and extension of existing statistics which covers thirty-four countries accounting for about 80% of the world economy. Global inventories for ecological endowments of six categories, i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, energy sources, water resources, exergy resources, solar emergy resources, and cosmic emergy resources, are accounted in detail. As a result of the modeling, embodied intensities of different ecological endowments are obtained for all forty sectors, based on which the sectoral embodiments for consumptive and productive uses are presented separately. Results of this study provide a sound scientific database for policy making on global climate change mitigation as well as on global resources management.