Fig. 1: Trend analysis of outsourcing for environmental and social proxies linked to SDGs in a four-quadrant perspective, 1990–2018.
From: Polarizing and equalizing trends in international trade and Sustainable Development Goals
There are 12 panels, each showing an environmental or social proxy linked to SDGs. The interpretation of all panels is as follows: quadrant I shows export-trending net importers; quadrant II shows export-trending net exporters; quadrant III shows import-trending net importers and quadrant IV shows import-trending net exporters. The x axis shows the time-average outsourced fraction \(\overline{\overline{{\bf{s}}}}\) and the y axis shows the temporal change of the outsourced fraction \(\dot{\bar{{\bf{s}}}}\). These fractions are calculated by considering the countries’ interactions according to the producer and consumer perspectives to quantify outsourcing over time—1990 to 2018 (Methods). The dotted line passing through the quadrants is the four-quadrant slope, a linear fit bq, with countries in quadrants II and III representing overall polarizing trends and countries in quadrants I and IV overall equalizing trends. Uncertainty of the slope bq is characterized as two bands: dark band showing one standard deviation and light band two standard deviations. Circle size represents impacts embodied in trade (for example, for SDG 13: emissions embodied in trade), circle fill/opacity represents per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Credit: icons from the UN Sustainable Development Goals (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment). Full country names for abbreviations are provided in the supporting documentation of the GLORIA database (https://ielab.info/analyse/gloria).
