UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102467

Authors

Jason Hickel · Christian Dorninger · Hanspeter Wieland · Intan Suwandi

Reported year

2022

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:16:21.776574+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:16:21.776574+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

BOKU University · Illinois State University · Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research · London School of Economics and Political Science · Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona · Vienna University of Economics and Business

Documentary abstract — original language

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W4212948295

DOI

10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102467

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102467
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W4212948295

Documented bibliographic relations

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7 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

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