Sustainable Development and Industrial Development: Manufacturing Environmental Performance, Technology and Consumption/Production Perspectives

Industrial development has always been seen as the main engine for economic growth due to its large economic multiplier and technological opportunities. However, manufacturing sectors are directly and indirectly responsible for a large share of overall environmental pressures, raising concerns for the environmental sustainability of manufacturing-based development. In this paper we evaluate the drivers and decoupling trends of environmental pressures arising (directly or indirectly) from manufacturing production and consumption for a large selection of developed and developing countries. As a first step we decompose changes in emission intensity of manufacturing sectors into a series of components by means of a shift- share analysis to identify the main drivers of change. A second step will compare direct environmental pressures generated by manufacturing sectors (production perspective) with the amount of emissions generated (domestically and abroad) by the domestic consumption of manufacturing goods (production perspective). Finally, we evaluate the possible emergence of an EKC dynamics for production and consumption perspective emissions for the world as a whole and for different continents.