Export partner dependence and environmental degradation, 1965--2000: A cross-national study of deforestation in less-developed countries

Social scientific studies of environmental degradation often test the domestic ecological impacts of overall levels of exports for less-developed countries but fail to analyze the effects of dependence on export partner relationships with more economically developed and militarily powerful countries. Drawing from theoretical and empirical works in environmental sociology, international political-economy, ecostructural world-systems analysis, and the trade dependence literature, I test the effects of four forms of export partner dependence on deforestation in less developed countries of the contemporary world-economy 1965--2000. More specifically, I test a series of theoretically grounded propositions concerning the extent to which more economically and militarily powerful countries externalize their environmental costs associated with unsustainable levels of natural resource consumption to less-powerful and less-developed countries dependent on export relationships with them. To test the series of related hypotheses, I construct four comprehensive export partner dependence indicators weighted by (1) total gross domestic product of receiving countries, (2) per capita gross domestic product of receiving countries, (3) total military expenditures of receiving countries, and (4) military expenditures per soldier of receiving countries. Values of these indicators quantify the relative level of a country's export partner dependence on more economically developed/powerful countries, and/or more militarily powerful/technologically advanced per soldier countries. Using ordinary least squares regression, I incorporate the indices into a series of quantitative cross-national analyses of deforestation 1965--2000. Robust findings indicate that less-developed countries with higher levels of these types of export partner dependence do experience relatively higher levels of deforestation, net of other factors including economic development, Kuznets effects, total population change, urbanization, rural encroachment, domestic economy structure, forms of domestic inequality, domestic human capital, state strength, democratization, and other forms of export dependence. Results confirm macro-environmental sociological, political-economic, world-systems, and trade dependence arguments concerning the externalization of ecological costs by more powerful and affluent nations and the pernicious environmental consequences of export partner dependence for less-developed countries.