Impacts of international trade on global inequality of energy and water use

We are not on track to meet the SDGs by 2030 despite considerable efforts. Sino-US trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic raise the tide of trade protection that may also go against SDGs. To explore how international trade affects SDGs, this study quantifies the impacts of international trade on global energy and water inequality by constructing resource-Gini-coefficients in terms of reserve, production, and consumption. We find that international trade alleviates global inequality in energy use, in which direct energy trade reduces the inequality significantly while nonenergy commodity trade aggravates it slightly. However, international trade has a pretty minor impact on improving global water inequality. The developing economies suffer a large amount of embodied energy and water outflows. For example, BRICS exported 712.3 Mtoe of embodied energy and 130.5 billion m³ of virtual water to the rest of the world, exceeding the sum of energy/water use in Germany and France. The developed economies, especially the USA and EU, outsource energy- and water-intensive commodities to reduce domestic energy shortage and water stress, roughly corresponding to India's energy use and two times of water use of South Africa.