Diálogos. Revista Electrónica de Historia ISSN Impreso: 2215-3292 ISSN electrónico: 1409-469X

OAI: https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/dialogos/oai
The Open Veins of Latin America: A biophysical dimension of international trade (1900-2016)
PDF (Español (España))
HTML (Español (España))
EPUB (Español (España))

Keywords

Social Metabolism
Ecologically Unequal Exchange
Globalization
Material Flow Accounting
Latin America
trade
natural resources
Metabolismo Social
Intercambio Ecológico Desigual
Globalización
Contabilidad del Flujos de Materiales
América Latina
comercio
recursos naturales

Abstract

Latin America has long played a key role in the global provision of natural resources. Most of the continent’s economies are low-value, primary-product net exporters, while they import manufactured goods at a high price. There is a general agreement among researchers from various fields that this pattern of trade specialization has very negative implications for economic development, the environment, and the local population wellbeing. Yet there is little empirical evidence on the total contribution of Latin America to the rest of the world’s regions. Drawing on Material Flow Accounting methodology, this paper estimates physical and monetary trade in 16 Latin American economies between 1900 and 2016.

https://doi.org/10.15517/dre.v21i2.39736
PDF (Español (España))
HTML (Español (España))
EPUB (Español (España))

References

Bértola, L., y Ocampo, J. A. (2013). The economic development of Latin America since independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Blattman, C., Hwang, J. y Williamson, J. G. (2003). The Terms of Trade and Economic Growth in the Periphery 1870-1938 (Working Paper Series No. 9940). Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Blattman, C., Hwang, J. y Williamson, J. G. (2004). The Impact of the Terms of Trade on Economic Development in the Periphery, 1870-1939: Volatility and Secular Change (Working Paper Series No. 10600). Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Blattman, C., Hwang, J. y Williamson, J. G. (2007). Winners and losers in the commodity lottery: The impact of terms of trade growth and volatility in the Periphery 1870-1939. Journal of Development Economics, 82(1), 156–179.

Bruckner, M., Giljum, S., Lutz, C. y Wiebe, K. S. (2012). Materials embodied in international trade–Global material extraction and consumption between 1995 and 2005. Global Environmental Change, 22(3), 568-576.

Cardoso, F. H. (1977). La originalidad de la copia: la CEPAL y la idea de desarrollo. Revista de la CEPAL, 4(7), 40.

Castro, S. H. y Sánchez, M. (2003). Environmental viewpoint on small-scale copper, gold and silver mining in Chile. Journal of Cleaner Production, 11(2), 207-213.

Collier, P. y Hoeffler, A. (2005). Resource rents, governance, and conflict. Journal of conflict resolution, 49(4), 625-633.

Common, M. y Stagl, S. (2005). Ecological economics: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crespo-Marín, Z. y Pérez-Rincón, M. (2019). El metabolismo social en las economías andinas y centroamericanas, 1970-2013. sociedad y economía, (36), 53-81.

Daly, H. (2019). Some overlaps between the first and second thirty years of ecological economics. Ecological Economics, 164, 106372.

Dittrich, M. y Bringezu, S. (2010). The physical dimension of international trade: Part 1: Direct global flows between 1962 and 2005. Ecological economics, 69(9), 1838-1847.

Dorninger, C. y Eisenmenger, N. (2016). South America’s biophysical involvement in international trade: the physical trade balances of Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil in the light of ecologically unequal exchange. Journal of Political Ecology, 23(1), 394-409.

Dorninger, C. y Hornborg, A. (2015). Can EEMRIO analyses establish the occurrence of ecologically unequal exchange? Ecological Economics, 119, 414-418.

EJOLT. (2019). Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade. Recuperado de http://www.ejolt.org/

Ellis, R. E. (2009). China in Latin America: the whats and wherefores (Vol. 46). Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Emmanuel, A. (1972). Unequal exchange: A study of the imperialism of trade. Monthly Review Press.

Eurostat. (2018). Economic-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA). Eurostat.

Fajnzylber, F. (1983). La industrialización trunca de América Latina. Ciudad de México: Editorial Nueva Imagen.

Ferguson, N. (2005). Colossus: The rise and fall of the American empire. London: Penguin.

Fischer-Kowalski, M., y Amann, C. (2001). Beyond IPAT and Kuznets curves: globalization as a vital factor in analysing the environmental impact of socio-economic metabolism. Population and Environment, 23(1), 7-47.

Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., Giljum, S., Lutter, S., Mayer, A., Bringezu, S., ... y Weisz, H. (2011). Methodology and indicators of economy-wide material flow accounting: State of the art and reliability across sources. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 15(6), 855-876.

Fontana, J. (2011). Por el bien del imperio. Una historia del mundo desde 1954. Barcelona: Pasado y Presente.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). (1948-1961). Anuarios internacionales de estadística agrícola (varios años). Instituto Internacional de Agricultura.

Frank, A. G. (1967). Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America (Vol. 93). New York: NYU Press.

Gallini, S. (2009). Una historia ambiental del café en Guatemala: la Costa Cuca entre 1830 y 1902. Guatemala: Avansco.

Galt, R. E. (2008). Pesticides in export and domestic agriculture: Reconsidering market orientation and pesticide use in Costa Rica. Geoforum, 39(3), 1378-1392.

Giampietro, M. (2006). Comments on “The energetic metabolism of the European Union and the United States” by Haberl and colleagues: Theoretical and practical considerations on the meaning and usefulness of traditional energy analysis. Journal of Industrial ecology, 10(4), 173-185.

Giljum, S. (2004). Trade, materials flows, and economic development in the South: the example of Chile. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 8(1-2), 241-261.

Giljum, S., & Eisenmenger, N. (2004). North-South trade and the distribution of environmental goods and burdens: a biophysical perspective. The Journal of Environment Development, 13(1), 73–100.

Giljum, S., Dittrich, M., Lieber, M., & Lutter, S. (2014). Global patterns of material flows and their socio-economic and environmental implications: a MFA study on all countries world-wide from 1980 to 2009. Resources, 3(1), 319-339.

Goebel, A. (2013). Los bosques del “progreso”. Explotación forestal y régimen ambiental en Costa Rica: 1883-1955.

González-Martinez, A. C. y Schandl, H. (2008). The biophysical perspective of a middle income economy: Material flows in Mexico. Ecological Economics, 68(1-2), 317-327.

Gudynas, E. (2009). Diez tesis urgentes sobre el nuevo extractivismo. Extractivismo, política y sociedad, 187.

Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Pauliuk, S., Krausmann, F., Müller, D. B. y Fischer-Kowalski, M. (2019). Contributions of sociometabolic research to sustainability science. Nature Sustainability, 1.

Haberler, G. (1957). Los términos de intercambio y el desarrollo económico, en Ellis, H. S. El desarrollo económico y América Latina. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, pp. 325-351.

Hadass, Y. S. y Williamson, J. G. (2003). Terms-of-trade shocks and economic performance, 1870–1940: Prebisch and Singer revisited. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 51(3), 629–656.

Hall, C.A.S., Leon Pérez. C., Leclerc, G. (Eds.). (2000). Quantifying SustainableDevelopment. The Future of Tropical Economies. San Diego: Academic Press.

Hornborg, A. (2012). Global ecology and unequal exchange: fetishism in a zero-sum world. New York: Routledge.

Houghton, R. A., Lefkowitz, D. S., & Skole, D. L. (1991). Changes in the landscape of Latin America between 1850 and 1985 I. Progressive loss of forests. Forest Ecology and Management,38(3-4), 143-172.

Hurtt, G. C., Chini, L. P., Frolking, S., Betts, R. A., Feddema, J., Fischer, G., ... & Jones, C. D. (2011). Harmonization of land-use scenarios for the period 1500–2100: 600 years of global gridded annual land-use transitions, wood harvest, and resulting secondary lands. Climatic change, 109(1-2), 117.

Infante-Amate, J. y Krausmann, F. (2019). Trade, ecologically unequal exchange, and colonial legacy: the case of France and its former colonies (1962–2015). Ecological economics, 156, 98-109.

Infante-Amate, J., & Picado, W. (2018). Energy flows in the coffee plantations of Costa Rica: from traditional to modern systems (1935–2010). Regional environmental change, 18(4), 1059-1071.

Infante-Amate, J., de Molina, M. G. y Toledo, V. M. (2017). El metabolismo social. Historia, métodos y principales aportaciones. Revibec: revista iberoamericana de economía ecológica, 27, 130-152.

Instituto Internacional de Agricultura (IIA). (1909-1947). Anuarios internacionales de estadística agrícola (varios años). Instituto Internacional de Agricultura.

Krausmann, F., Gingrich, S., Eisenmenger, N., Erb, K. H., Haberl, H. y Fischer-Kowalski, M. (2009). Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century. Ecological economics, 68(10), 2696-2705.

Krugman, P. R., Obstfeld, M. y Melitz, M. J. (2012). International Economics: Theory & Policy. Boston: Pearson Education.

Larrea, C. y Warnars, L. (2009). Ecuador’s Yasuni-ITT Initiative: Avoiding emissions by keeping petroleum underground. Energy for Sustainable Development, 13(3), 219-223.

Lassaletta, L., Billen, G., Grizzetti, B., Anglade, J., & Garnier, J. (2014). 50 year trends in nitrogen use efficiency of world cropping systems: the relationship between yield and nitrogen input to cropland. Environmental Research Letters, 9(10), 105011.

League of Nations (1926/44). Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations (several years). League of Nation: Geneva.

Li, F. (2015). Unearthing conflict: corporate mining, activism, and expertise in Peru. United States: Duke University Press.

Malhi, Y., Roberts, J. T., Betts, R. A., Killeen, T. J., Li, W. y Nobre, C. A. (2008). Climate change, deforestation, and the fate of the Amazon. science, 319(5860), 169-172.

Malm, O., Pfeiffer, W. C., Souza, C. M. y Reuther, R. (1990). Mercury pollution due to gold mining in the Madeira River basin, Brazil. Ambio, 19(1), 11-15.

Manrique, P. L. P., Brun, J., González-Martínez, A. C., Walter, M. y Martínez-Alier, J. (2013). The biophysical performance of Argentina (1970–2009). Journal of Industrial Ecology, 17(4), 590-604.

Martínez-Alier, J. y Muradian, R. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of ecological economics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Mitchell, B. (Ed.). (2013). International historical statistics, 1750-2010. London: Palgrave/Macmillan.

Funes, R. F. (2004). De bosque a sabana: azúcar, deforestación y medio ambiente en Cuba, 1492-1926. Madrid: Siglo XXI.

MOxLAD (2019). Base de datos de Historia Económica del América Latina. Recuperado de http://moxlad.cienciassociales.edu.uy/

Muradian, R., Walter, M. y Martinez-Alier, J. (2012). Hegemonic transitions and global shifts in social metabolism: Implications for resource-rich countries. Introduction to the special section. Global environmental change, 22(3), 559-567.

Naredo, J. M. (2010). Raíces económicas del deterioro ecológico y social. Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores.

Ocampo, J. A. (2017). Commodity-led development in Latin America. International Development Policy Revue internationale de politique de développement, 9(9), 51-76.

Ocampo, J. A. y Parra, M. (2010). The terms of trade for Commodities since the mid-19th century. Revista de Historia Económica/Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History (Second Series), 28(1), 11–43.

Ocampo, J. A. y Parra, M. Á. (2003). Los términos de intercambio de los productos básicos en el siglo XX. Revista de la CEPAL, 79, 7-35.

O’Rourke, K. H. y Williamson, J. G. (1999). Globalization and history: the evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy. Cambridge, Massachusetts. London: MIT press.

Pádua, J. A. (2010). European colonialism and tropical forest destruction in Brazil. Environmental history: as if nature existed, 130-50.

Pérez Brignoli, H. (2018). Historia global de América Latina. Del siglo XXI a la independencia. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Pérez-Rincón, M. A. (2006). Colombian international trade from a physical perspective: Towards an ecological “Prebisch thesis”. Ecological Economics, 59(4), 519-529.

Pinilla, V., y Aparicio, G. (2015). Navigating in Troubled Waters: South American Exports of Food and Agricultural Products, 1900-1950. Revista de Historia Económica-Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 33(2), 223-255.Prebisch, R. (1981). Capitalismo periférico. Crisis y transformación. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Ricaurte Greene, B. R. (2012). El impacto ecológico del comercio ecuatoriano: flujos de materiales con los Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y China (Tesis de Maestría). Quito: FLACSO Sede Ecuador.

Rice, J. (2007). Ecological unequal exchange: Consumption, equity, and unsustainable structural relationships within the global economy. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 48(1), 43-72.

Ross, M. L. (1999). The political economy of the resource curse. World politics, 51(2), 297-322.

Ross, M. L. (2013). The oil curse: How petroleum wealth shapes the development of nations. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Russi, D., Gonzalez-Martinez, A. C., Silva-Macher, J. C., Giljum, S., Martínez-Alier, J. y Vallejo, M. C. (2008). Material flows in Latin America: a comparative analysis of Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru, 1980–2000. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 12(5-6), 704-720.

Sachs, J. D. y Warner, A. M. (2001). The curse of natural resources. European economic review,45(4-6), 827-838.

Samaniego, P., Vallejo, M. C. y Martínez-Alier, J. (2017). Commercial and biophysical deficits in South America, 1990–2013. Ecological Economics, 133, 62-73.

Schaffartzik, A., Mayer, A., Gingrich, S., Eisenmenger, N., Loy, C. y Krausmann, F. (2014). The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global material flows, 1950–2010. Global Environmental Change, 26, 87-97.

Schandl, H. y Eisenmenger, N. (2006). Regional patterns in global resource extraction. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 10(4), 133-147.

Schandl, H., Fischer-Kowalski, M., West, J., Giljum, S., Dittrich, M., Eisenmenger, N., ... others. (2017). Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity. Assessment Report for the UNEP International Resource Panel. Pre-publication final draft.

Scheidel, A., Del Bene, D., Liu, J., Navas, G., Mingorría, S., Demaria, F., Avila, S., Roy,B., Ertör, I., Temper, L., Martinez-Alier. J. (2020). Environmental Conflicts and Defenders: A Global View. Global Environmental Change (on-line first: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102104).

Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O. y Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the Anthropocene: the great acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, 2(1), 81-98.

Topik, S., Marichal, C. & Frank, Z. (2006). From silver to cocaine: Latin American commodity chains and the building of the world economy, 1500–2000. Duke University Press.

Vallejo, M. C. (2010). Biophysical structure of the Ecuadorian economy, foreign trade, and policy implications. Ecological Economics, 70(2), 159-169.

Vallejo, M. C., Pérez Rincón, M. A. y Martinez-Alier, J. (2011). Metabolic profile of the Colombian Economy from 1970 to 2007. Journal of industrial Ecology, 15(2), 245-267.

Wenar, L. (2015). Blood oil: Tyrants, violence, and the rules that run the world. Oxford: University Press. Oxford.

West, J. y Schandl, H. (2013). Material use and material efficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ecological Economics, 94, 19-27.

Wiedmann, T. O., Schandl, H., Lenzen, M., Moran, D., Suh, S., West, J. y Kanemoto, K. (2015). The material footprint of nations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(20), 6271-6276.

Williamson, J. (2008). Globalization and the Great Divergence: terms of trade booms, volatility and the poor periphery, 1782-1913. European Review of Economic History, 12(3), 355–391. https://doi.org/10.1017/s136149160800230x

Williamson, J. G. (2011). Trade and poverty: when the Third World fell behind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT press.

World Bank (WB). (2019). Data Bank. World Development Indicators. Recuperado de https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators

World Trade Organization (WTO). (2019). WTO Data Portal. Recuperado de http://stat.wto.org/Home/WSDBHome.aspx

WU Vienna (2020). Material flows by material group, 1970-2017. Visualisation based upon the UN IRP Global Material Flows Database. Vienna University of Economics and Business. Online available at: materialflows.net/visualisation-centre

Zarrilli, A. G. (2004). Historia, Ambiente y Sociedad. La explotación forestal de los bosques chaqueños argentinos (1895-1948). Diálogos revista electrónica de historia, 4(2).

Comments

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.