Countries are racing to slash their carbon emissions. Norway, for instance, is on track to halve its footprint by 2030. To hit such ambitious targets, nations take on all manner of efforts, from large-scale renewable installations to electrified transportation, but progress might not always be as perfectly green as it seems.
Rich nations cutting emissions have a tendency to shift some of their polluting activities to poor locales. This transfer is called “pollution offshoring,” and it doesn’t reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere worldwide. What it does do is make wealthy countries look like they have better records than they really do, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS Climate.
Of course unraveling this is more complex than rebalancing a spreadsheet. Here’s what to understand about pollution offshoring—and what we can do to slow its roll.
What is pollution offshoring?
There are essentially two flavors of pollution offshoring. The first occurs when wealthy nations avoid manufacturing products that create a lot of pollution at home and instead import them from poorer territories that have laxer environmental regulations. Rich countries get stuff, and the poor ones get failing grades on their climate report cards. (Singapore, for instance, buys its cement and steel from developing economies like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.) This also concentrates harmful pollution in countries like China, India, Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines—places that are already bearing the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis.
The other side of offshoring happens when the developed world sends its scraps abroad. For example: Great Britain sends used cars that are no longer roadworthy to low- and middle-income countries. And of course there’s also the literal mountains of fast fashion waste that wind up in the developing world.
This balance-sheet shifting has existed since the late 20th century, and it isn’t necessarily driven by a malicious desire to look greener as much as it is by economics. In many cases, it’s just cheaper to produce goods elsewhere. In the United States, things picked up around the 1970s with an increase in outsourced electronics manufacturing to places like Japan. The U.S. financial crash of the 1980s solidified the shift.
Even so, this behavior can be harmful for both the planet and the bottom line. According to a 2020 report from the Reshoring Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit, financial gains evaporate when you account for the costs of climate-fueled disasters.
What you can do
Pollution offshoring is so intertwined in the workings of the global economy that righting the imbalance is complex. As individuals, the biggest thing we can do is work to decrease demand, which means, yes, buying less new stuff—particularly items whose manufacturing is heavily polluting, like electronics and cars. When a real need arises, opt for secondhand or items made locally. There are loads of resources available to find U.S.-made goods such as AmericansWorking.com, this guide from Authenticity50, and the Made Index. (And for anyone wondering: Buying local doesn’t automatically mean you’re hurting distant economies.)
The other to-do item is to keep your ears open for when trade policy hits the political to-do list. For example, the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement does theoretically introduce some environmental protections, but most experts believe it can do more to address climate change impacts. When it comes up for federal review this year, we’ll keep an eye out for when your calls and emails to experts will be most needed.