Editor’s choice
Editor’s choice
Commodity Footprints was developed by SEI and JNCC to make the Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption (GEIC) Indicator data, alongside related environmental metrics linked to global commodity supply chains, more accessible and usable through an interactive dashboard. It responds to a common evidence gap: many countries track domestic environmental pressures, but much less information is available on the overseas impacts associated with what they consume and produce through international trade.
Data in the dashboard and the GEIC indicator is produced with SEI’s Input-Output Trade Analysis modelling framework, which combines commodity production and trade data with financial flows to trace goods through complex supply chains to final consumption. This allows users to explore how environmental impacts and risks are linked to specific commodities, producer countries and consuming countries or regions.
Tool / Input-Output Trade Analysis (IOTA) is an environmental footprinting tool linking data on commodity production with inter-industry buying and selling.
For more information on the methods and modelling behind the tool, including a recorded webinar with a technical introduction, visit the Commodity Footprints website.
Feature / The tool's creators explain how the free interactive dashboard can be used to visualize data on the global environmental impacts of consumption and production.
Perspective / Trase highlights how the Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption (GEIC) indicator informs fairer, clearer and stronger policies to protect biodiversity.
Past event / Join SEI at COP16 to explore strategies for reducing the global footprint of consumption equitably, supporting the Global Biodiversity Framework's Target 16.
The tool was developed by SEI York and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), with production of the underlying dataset commissioned and supported by the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).
Dashboard development was supported by the UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund through the GCRF Trade Hub (project ES/S008160/1) and Trase. The work also benefited from methodological support and close collaboration from researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, and the University of Cambridge.
Feature / The tool's creators explain how the free interactive dashboard can be used to visualize data on the global environmental impacts of consumption and production.
Journal article / Consumer countries and blocs are developing laws to tackle deforestation linked to commodity imports but they are insufficient to address this global issue.
Other publication / Whether trade is "good" or "bad" for our societies and the environment has been a topic of ongoing debate. This brief is a simple overview of the costs.
