Last week, on October 16th–18th, GEAR group members presented findings from the TWIN SEEDS project’s Work Package 4 at the XLVIII International Conference on Regional Science in Cuenca, Spain. The event, hosted by the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), the Spanish Regional Science Association (AECR), and the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), brought together experts to explore the latest in regional science, focusing on 'Sustainability, water, and territory: regional strategies for the challenges of the 21st century'.
A special session titled 'Environmental Impact of Global Value Chains Reconfiguration and Emerging Trends in International Trade' was chaired by María Ángeles Cadarso. The session addressed the disruptions in international trade that reveal the vulnerability of global value chains and countries and have accelerated new trends in international trade and global value chains reconfiguration, looking for resilience. Reshoring, backshoring, friendshoring, greenshoring are terms increasingly used to name these new trends. These evolutions will impact the environment at several levels, depending on economies' production specialisation, trade dependency, and technology adoption. The quantification and evaluation of these environmental impacts, in terms of changes in carbon emissions, business practices, and diffusion of environmentally friendly production strategies, including the role of MNEs, are crucial to assess the resilience of the economies and to inform policymakers to increase synergies between the resilience goal and others like the fight against climate change.
Therefore, several researchers dove deeper into this and exposed several TWIN SEEDS papers:
- Identifying Critical EU Carbon Emissions Risk through Global Value Chains presented by María Ángeles Tobarra Gómez
- The Consequences of Global Reshoring Trends in EU Carbon Emissions presented by Mateo Ortiz
- Environmental Impact from MNEs Technological Transfers on Right-Sourcing Strategies presented by Jorge Enrique Zafrilla Rodríguez
- Mitigation Potentials for EU Environmental Right-Sourcing Strategies presented by Nuria Gómez Sanz
If you'd like to get more information on the matter, have a look at the report for WP4, which has just been released!