The semi-periphery and ecologically unequal exchange: carbon emissions and recursive exploitation

ABSTRACT

Social science research has been increasingly interested in the relationships between the environment and the economy. One critical research agenda – ecological unequal exchange – has explored the asymmetric flow of resources and unequal distribution of environmental harms across the world economy, particularly between high-income and low-income countries. However, research into the relationship between middle-income nations and low-income nations has been relatively minimal. This study, building off a world-systems taxonomy of core, semi-periphery, and periphery states, looks to extend research into the ecological dynamics captured in the trade among the non-core states, with regards to carbon emissions, over the course of 1996–2018. I find that patterns of ecological unequal exchange vary among the tiers of the semi-periphery – identified as the ‘Semi-Core,’ the ‘Regional Powers,’ and the ‘Secondary Regional States’ – suggesting the importance of tier-specific political-economic features in generating ecological unequal exchange outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon emissions
• international political economy
• ecologically unequal exchange
• international trade
• recursive exploitation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2024.2309407.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hassan El Tinay

Hassan El Tinay is a current doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. His research focuses on the interaction between political economy and the anthropogenic drivers of climate change, with a particular interest in ecologically unequal exchange and macro-historical quantitative methods.