ABSTRACT
The last two decades represented a substantial increase in the volume of products and services traded internationally. Production chains became spread all over the world, leading to a new division of labour, where management, production and resource extraction can happen in substantially different places on earth. In a third of a century, between 1980 and 2014, imports worldwide have increased over five-fold, mainly driven by imports to high-income countries (Fig. 8.1). Industrialised countries have gradually become net importers of environmental pressures, such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy, materials and water [1] and also of labour [2].
