Since 1990, the UK has reduced its emissions by 53 per cent, making it one of the world leaders in climate action. It’s not alone though – Sweden, France and Switzerland are just some of the countries that have also seen significant cuts. But have they really?
These record emissions cuts have been delivered in a variety of ways, from deploying renewable energy to the power grid to insulating homes and encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles. But for some sectors, carbon cuts have been delivered by shifting production of polluting goods, such as steel or cement, abroad. As emissions in wealthy countries have declined, in poorer nations they have shot up as new factories and industrial facilities have sprung up.
Now, at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues are suggesting that democratic countries like the UK and others are more likely to “offshore” their emissions in this way, suggesting these nations may not entirely be able to justify their reputations as climate leaders.
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The researchers investigated the link between democracy and pollution offshoring by analysing the trade patterns and political set-up of 161 countries during the time period 1990-2015. They found that democratic nations tended to outsource more of their environmental impacts, on average, than less democratic countries, even when controlling for factors including GDP per capita. This outsourcing correlates with lower domestic emissions, the team found.
Bernauer says politicians in democratic countries are under pressure from voters to deliver a clean domestic environment while maintaining consumer freedoms. “We can impose very high environmental standards domestically, so we can clean up the local environment,” he says. “We also can do more about climate change, because we can decarbonise the economy, and we can do all of that essentially without reducing people’s consumption or freedom to consume.”
“It’s quite human to want to have the cake and eat it, as the British would say,” he says.
But at the London School of Economics and Political Science is doubtful the study has proved it is the democratic nature of countries that drives offshoring behaviour. “It’s unclear that the very strong conclusions that the authors derive are warranted by their analysis,” he says, pointing out that “correlation is not causation”.
The pattern over recent decades has indeed been for richer nations to outsource industrial production to poorer countries, he says. But in fact, much of this offshoring behaviour has been limited to very energy-intensive industries or large multinationals with the resources needed to move their supply chains abroad, he points out.
Meanwhile, in recent years, emissions that might be considered “offshored” have actually declined as consumption falls. In the UK, for example, . The story is replicated across many European nations, says Saussay.
“If you look at the consumption-based carbon footprint of most European countries, it’s been trending in the right direction for a good decade,” he says. “Could it be better? Could it be faster? Absolutely. But it’s not true anymore that everything we do about climate is just shifting all of our carbon-intensive stuff to China.” , territorial and consumption emissions are both hovering around 1998 levels, after rising in the mid-2000s.
Many richer countries are under pressure to decarbonise further without eroding their remaining industrial base. Policies such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which the European Union is introducing in 2026, will see levies applied to polluting products imported into the EU from the rest of the world, in a bid to raise demand for low-carbon materials. In effect, this imposes the EU’s environmental standards on other countries around the world. Both Bernauer and Saussay say policies like CBAM should help to level the playing field of production emissions. “It has a limiting effect on this carbon footprint we produce abroad,” says Bernauer.
PLOS Climate
