Multiscale Accounting Of PM_2.5 Embodied In China’s Foreign Trade And Its Economic And Social Impacts

While cross-regional trade increases the economic and social benefits of exporting regions,it also implicitly transfers PM_2.5 emissions and their health effects,which in turn triggers inter-regional inequalities in embodied air pollution.Scientific research and judgment of China’s foreign trade embodied PM_2.5 emissions and its economic and social problems,and systematic response to the inequality problem between regions of embodied air pollution is the basic requirement and important grasp to promote the construction of ecological civilization.This paper constructs a coupled integrated modeling framework based on the idea of multidisciplinary intersection to account for the embodied PM_2.5 emissions and economic and social benefits of China’s foreign trade at multiple scales and to assess the health impacts due to PM_2.5 emissions.On this basis,the export environmental cost index（AEI）and the export health cost index（AEH）are constructed to characterize PM_2.5emissions and health losses per unit of economic and social benefits embodied in foreign trade.Further,the trade inequality index（QI）is constructed to characterize the relative magnitude between the ratio of import and export volume of trade embodied economic and social gains and the ratio of import and export volume of trade embodied PM_2.5 emissions.Finally,we reveal the unequal relationship between PM_2.5 emissions and their health impacts and economic and social benefits embodied by China’s foreign trade from national,regional and rasterized scales.Also,we explore the mitigation path of the above unequal relationship by analyzing the synergistic effect of pollution reduction gain of socio-economic drivers.（1）The multi-scale accounting results of China’s foreign trade embodied PM_2.5 cover multiple types of characteristics such as evolutionary trends,provincial scale,spatial distribution and the influence of drivers;China’s export trade embodied PM_2.5 emissions show a development trend of rising first and then falling during 1995-2015,with declining areas mainly concentrated in Guangdong,Jiangsu and Zhejiang,further focusing on the rasterized scale,mainly located in the Yangtze River Delta,Pearl River Delta and resource-based cities and their surrounding areas;Lower energy intensity and decreasing share of export trade are the dominant factors driving the reduction of trade embodied PM_2.5emissions at national,regional and industry levels.（2）Since the promotion of joint prevention and control of air pollution in 2010,China’s PM_2.5emissions embodied in foreign trade decreased by 8.46%as of 2015,and the annual average PM_2.5 concentration decreased by 42.57%,but the embodied PM_2.5 health loss increased by 38.71%,because The health benefits of reduced PM_2.5 concentrations and baseline mortality from diseases are not sufficient to offset the health losses from increasing population size and population aging;Health impacts differed significantly in terms of provincial size,disease type,age structure,and spatial distribution.（3）The embodied economic and social benefits of China’s export trade showed an upward trend during 1995-2015,with Guangdong province,Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province receiving greater net economic and social benefits through foreign trade.（4）PM_2.5emissions per unit of labor employment embodied by China’s export trade increased gradually during 1995-2015,and PM_2.5emissions per unit of economic value-added embodied by trade decreased significantly,in other words,due to the transformation of China’s foreign trade product structure from labor-intensive to high value-added products,the social gain per unit of PM_2.5 emission is decreasing,while the economic gain is increasing;The regional distribution shows low in the southeast coastal region and high in the north.（5）The inequality of PM_2.5emissions-social gains in China’s overall foreign trade slowly increased and the inequality of PM_2.5 emissions-economic gains decreased significantly during 1995-2015;More than80%of provinces and regions have a QI index greater than 1,meaning that these regions are taking on more pollution losses compared to the economic and social benefits gained in trade.（6）To reduce the inequality of air pollution between regions in trade and alleviate the dilemma of economic and social development and air pollution management,it is necessary not only to give full play to the positive synergy of economic and social factors such as production structure at the regional and industry levels in terms of pollution reduction gain,but also to explore the positive synergy potential of other factors such as consumption structure at the regional and industry levels in terms of pollution reduction gain as much as possible.