The growth of global supply chains has fundamentally reshaped resource extraction, commodity production, trade, consumption, and the geographic distribution of economic benefits and environmental burdens. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, a highly dynamic emerging area, holds a pivotal position in global supply chains as a major supplier of raw materials, intermediate goods, and labor. APAC's share of global exports rose significantly from 28.7% in 2000 to 36.1% in 2018, with intra-regional trade accounting for a substantial portion. Initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) further underscore the efforts to enhance economic growth through regional trade. Despite the promising economic gains, APAC faces considerable environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. Overexploitation of groundwater, particularly in arid regions of India, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, and Nepal, threatens food and energy production. Past rapid economic growth coupled with decreasing resource efficiency contributed significantly to exceeding global resource utilization limits. International trade has been linked to substantial mortality due to air pollution. APAC is also highly vulnerable to natural disasters, with significant economic losses. Income inequality remains a pervasive issue, despite progress in poverty alleviation. Addressing these environmental, social, and economic gaps is crucial for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While there's been significant progress in understanding the impact of regional economic welfare on global resource use and emissions, particularly through consumption-based environmental footprint accounting, knowledge regarding APAC remains fragmented. Most footprint studies focus on single indicators (water, energy, carbon, PM2.5, land, labor, materials), while a few consider multiple indicators. Temporal coverage also varies, with many studies using single-year snapshots. Existing studies have mainly focused on large economies like the US, China, and the EU. This study aims to address this knowledge gap by analyzing the environmental, social, and economic footprints of APAC's economic growth and trade activities from 1995 to 2015, using a multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis with six key indicators.

Existing literature on environmental footprints highlights the significant impact of globalization and international trade on resource use and environmental emissions. Studies using consumption-based accounting methods have linked regional consumption to environmental impacts, both within and outside the region. However, these studies often focus on single indicators like blue water consumption, energy use, carbon emissions, PM2.5 emissions, land use, labor, and material extraction. A few studies have examined multiple indicators consistently, but the temporal coverage is often limited to a single-year snapshot. Moreover, research on APAC has been limited, with most studies focusing on larger economies such as the United States, China, and the European Union. While studies have shown the displacement of carbon emissions and labor to developing countries like China and India, driven by consumption in developed nations, a comprehensive understanding of the interconnected environmental, social, and economic implications of APAC’s intra-regional trade and global trade linkages remains limited. This study helps fill this research gap by providing a more integrated analysis of multiple indicators across time.

This research quantifies the environmental-social-economic footprints of APAC consumption and trade in 1995 and 2015 using EXIOBASE 3.6, a comprehensive multi-regional input-output (MRIO) database. EXIOBASE provides consistent time series data for numerous product groups and regions globally. APAC is represented by seven countries/regions (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, China), encompassing a large portion of APAC’s population and GDP, with smaller economies aggregated as 'RoAP'. The analysis uses six footprint indicators: blue water consumption, energy use, PM2.5 emissions, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, employment, and value-added. These indicators cover natural resource use, environmental threats, and socio-economic effects, aligning with various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The footprint for each indicator (k) in year (t) associated with the final demand of a country/region (i), Yit, is calculated using the Leontief inverse method. The formula is: Eikt = xit (I - At)-1 Yit + Fhh,kt. This approach does not allocate fixed capital formation to production. Calculations are performed in Matlab. Data for all variables in the equation come from EXIOBASE 3.6. GHG emissions are measured as CO2 equivalents based on the 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP100). The energy footprint is based on primary energy use. Employment is the number of people employed, and value-added is an economic measure. The study breaks down footprints into impacts occurring domestically, within other APAC countries, and outside APAC.

The study reveals significant variations in environmental-social-economic footprints across APAC countries/regions, strongly correlated with affluence levels. While lower-income countries' footprints increased with poverty alleviation, most remained below global averages in 2015. Evidence suggests a correlation between economic development and environmental pollution (Environmental Kuznets Curve), although the socio-economic implications, such as employment and value-added, are positively correlated with affluence. Richer APAC economies displayed high reliance on outsourcing blue water consumption, PM2.5 emissions, and labor abroad, especially within the APAC region. Poorer economies relied mostly on domestic resources. The value-added footprints of APAC economies, especially middle- and low-income ones, experienced significant increases from 1995 to 2015. Intra-APAC trade increased interdependencies among economies. Developed economies imported resources and labor from less-developed regions, exacerbating existing imbalances. The intra-APAC trade resulted in a net outflow of labor from less developed economies, and uneven distributions of the economic benefits and environmental externalities. Developed APAC economies imported resources and labor from less-developed economies, particularly from RoAP and India, driving a significant portion of the virtual water and labor flows. China experienced a notable role shift in intra-APAC trade, especially regarding virtual water and labor flows. APAC's role in globalization is considerable. By 2015, APAC's share in global virtual flows of resources, emissions, and labor exceeded 50%. Intra-APAC trade and non-APAC outsourcing to APAC contributed significantly to the global trade, while APAC's outsourcing to non-APAC economies remained relatively smaller. APAC's economic gains from exports remained smaller than resources, emissions, and labor embedded in its exports, highlighting lower resource efficiency. Despite APAC’s significant role in the global supply chains, APAC's resource and environmental intensities decreased substantially from 1995 to 2015, improving faster than global averages for blue water, PM2.5, and labor intensity. However, APAC still lagged behind global averages in reducing energy and GHG intensity. Intra-APAC trade contributed to reductions in energy, GHG, and labor intensity, but PM2.5 intensity increased, due largely to the increasing volume of trade. China played a crucial role in APAC’s overall improvement in resource and emission intensities. Without China's improvements, APAC’s footprint and trade intensities would have shown larger increases from 1995 to 2015.

This research offers a comprehensive analysis of the environmental, social, and economic footprints of APAC's consumption and trade, highlighting growing interdependencies and widening disparities within the region. The increasing reliance of wealthier APAC economies on outsourcing resource extraction, emissions, and labor to poorer regions exacerbates existing inequalities. The findings emphasize the urgent need for more effective regional cooperation to promote sustainable development and address the uneven distribution of environmental burdens and economic benefits associated with intra-APAC trade and global supply chains. The results support the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in certain aspects, yet simultaneously demonstrate how economic development can increase socio-economic disparities unless accompanied by robust policies and initiatives for sustainable practices.

This study reveals a complex interplay between economic growth, trade, and sustainability in the APAC region. While APAC has shown improvements in resource and emissions intensity, considerable disparities remain, especially concerning the distribution of environmental burdens and economic gains. Further efforts towards regional cooperation, sustainable consumption and production practices, and policy interventions are crucial to balance economic growth with environmental protection and social equity. Future research could investigate the impacts of specific policy interventions and explore the role of technological innovations in fostering sustainable trade and consumption patterns within the region.

The study has limitations due to the aggregation of smaller APAC economies into one region (RoAP), which masks detailed country-level information. Using PM2.5 as a proxy for local pollution may not fully capture all environmental impacts. The analysis is also based on two-year snapshots (1995 and 2015), limiting the insights obtainable from interannual variations. Despite these limitations, the findings provide valuable insights into the intricate relationship between economic development, trade, and sustainability in the APAC region.