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Shifting pollution abroad may help democratic nations appear more environmentally friendly than non-democratic countries

Democratic countries tend to be rated "greener," or more environmentally friendly, compared to other countries—but this may be because they more often outsource the environmental impacts of their consumption to other nations, according to a study published in PLOS Climate by Thomas Bernauer and Ella Henninger from ETH Zurich, Switzerland and Tobias Böhmelt from the University of Essex.

Prior studies suggest that democracies have a better environmental protection record compared to more authoritarian nations. Now, the authors have investigated the link between democracy and environmental behaviors—in particular, focusing on "pollution offshoring" (when countries shift their production and/or consumption patterns so that highly polluting goods or processes are made or take place abroad instead of domestically) and the environmental impact of this.

Bernauer, Böhmelt, and Henninger analyzed 161 countries individually between 1990 and 2015, focusing on the relationship between democracy and pollution offshoring, and then evaluating how democratic pollution offshoring correlates to domestic environmental pollution as measured by greenhouse gas emissions.

They found that democratic countries tended to offshore environmentally-damaging products and processes significantly more than other countries. Their analysis also showed that pollution offshoring was significantly associated with lower emission levels locally, particularly for countries categorized as more democratic: greenhouse gas emissions for these more democratic nations were over one metric ton per capita lower (-1.55; -0.45) when increasing pollution offshoring, compared to less democratic nations.

These findings call into question the moral high ground of democracies versus autocracies in terms of environmental protection, and suggest that particularly high-income democracies should seek to reorient environmental polices to focus on the global environmental impact of their domestic economic activity.

The authors add, "We provide one of the first systematic studies on how much 'pollution offshoring' is associated with domestic (territorial) emission levels in democracies. The main result is that pollution offshoring is linked significantly and substantively with lower greenhouse gas emissions 'at home' in democracies."