Multi-regional land disturbances induced by mineral use in a product-based approach: A case study of gasoline, hybrid, battery electric and fuel cell vehicle production in Japan

Resource use in the country of final demand has severe environmental impacts in other distant countries and regions through resource exploitation. In the narrative of telecoupling, the land disturbance caused by economy-wide international trade has been widely addressed using a multi-regional input-output analysis, but not sufficiently considering the telecoupled land use associated with a specific manufactured product. In this study, using the total material requirement, a new methodology is proposed for evaluating telecoupled land disturbances induced by manufacturing a given product in a given country. This product-focused method is a hybrid approach based on the integration of inventory data of a given product (bottom-up) and the global trade database (top-down). The developed methodology was applied to evaluate the multi-regional land disturbances induced by the production of gasoline vehicles (GVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) in Japan, as a case study. Finally, the implication is further discussed from the perspective of supply risk, governance, and corporate social responsibility. It was found that the transition of automobile technology in Japan results in changes in the countries and regions most exposed to the telecoupled land disturbances: i.e., from Australia (26% for GVs) to Chile (27% for BEVs) and South Africa (20% for FCVs). The algorithm developed is relatively simplified so that it can be readily implemented to determine the telecoupled land disturbances associated with any product in any country for a sustainable interaction in their mineral trade with other distant countries and regions.