Reaching the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs) is influenced by a country's position in global value chains and its involvement in international trade. Here, we assess how changes in global trade patterns (CGTP) during 2004 and 2014 impacted 13 SDG indicators in 141 countries/regions which are further divided into four income groups. Trade pattern is characterized by the direction, composition, and magnitude of trade, indicating an economy imports what types (composition) and magnitudes of goods or services from where (direction). We find that CGTP aggravated socioeconomic and environmental inequality between countries in two ways: 1) the amount of indicators that significantly worsened due to CGTP decreased from 8 indicators (2004–2007) to 1 (2011–2014) for high-income and upper-middle-income countries, but increased from 5 to 14 for lower-middle-income and low-income countries; 2) CGTP led to a coupling of value added with most natural resource consumption and environmental pollution indicators for low-income countries, while they strengthened decoupling or reducing coupling for other countries. The findings imply one key to achieving SDGs is to address the inequality between rich and poor countries through implementing policy interventions that influence import and vertical supply chain thereby shifting the trade patterns towards environmental-economic decoupling in poor countries.

中文翻译：

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全球贸易格局的变化加剧了实现可持续发展目标的全球不平等


实现联合国可持续发展目标 （SDG） 受到一个国家在全球价值链中的地位及其参与国际贸易的影响。在本文中，我们评估了 2004 年和 2014 年全球贸易模式 （CGTP） 的变化如何影响 141 个国家/地区的 13 项可持续发展目标指标，这些指标进一步分为四个收入组别。贸易模式的特点是贸易的方向、构成和规模，表明一个经济体从哪里进口什么类型的商品或服务（构成）和规模（方向）。我们发现，CGTP 以两种方式加剧了国家之间的社会经济和环境不平等：1） 高收入和中高收入国家因 CGTP 而显著恶化的指标数量从 8 个指标（2004-2007 年）减少到 1 个指标（2011-2014 年），但中低收入和低收入国家从 5 个增加到 14 个;2） CGTP 导致低收入国家增加值与大多数自然资源消耗和环境污染指标耦合，同时它们加强了其他国家的脱钩或减少耦合。研究结果表明，实现可持续发展目标的一个关键是通过实施影响进口和垂直供应链的政策干预来解决富国和穷国之间的不平等问题，从而将贫穷国家的贸易模式转向环境经济脱钩。