National policies for reducing environmental pressures stemming from emissions and the use of natural resources usually adopt a producer approach, i.e. the legislation refers to pressures occurring within the territorial boundaries of a country. An alternative approach to environmental accounting is the consumer approach, which includes environmental pressures associated with imports for domestic consumption, wherever these pressures occur. The carbon footprint, for example, is such an approach, in which CO2 or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are considered from a consumer’s perspective. The consumer approach may offer new ways for policies to reduce pressures, and therefore it would be interesting to adopt this perspective in national environmental policy-making and international negotiations. To gain insight into the differences between the approaches, this paper discusses the concepts of both, showing the results of an empirical analysis and going into the application of the two different perspectives in (international) environmental policies.

Keywords: Environmental accounting, responsibility, multi-region input-output analysis, international trade, environmental policy

 

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