Environmental Impact of Trade (EIPOT)

The main objective of this project was to develop and specify an environmental accounting methodology which allows quantifying and assessing the trans-national environmental impacts of traded goods and services.

EIPOT was a project within the SKEP ERA-NET – a partnership of 17 government ministries and agencies, from 13 European countries, responsible for funding environmental research. The consortium, consisting of SEI/UoY (UK), SERI (AT), MNP (NL), and SCB (SE), brought together four core institutions from SKEP countries with outstanding international recognition and long-term experiences in the field of environmental accounting, augmented by expertise provided by three external experts from non-SKEP countries.

Objectives

The EIPOT project aimed to
• reviewed and comparatively evaluated a large number of existing environmental accounting techniques that allow to illustrate trans-national impacts of traded goods and services,

• identified the most suitable methodology and developed it further into an accounting approach, which can be applied by all SKEP member states,

• specified the (theoretical) framework and defined criteria for environmental accounting methodologies to be suitable for the assessment of environmental impacts of imported and exported goods and services,

• identified data requirements and suggested possible data sources for the improved methodology, and

• elaborated the roles of different regulatory authorities in providing required data and advised on the practical implementation of the methodology.

The outcome of the project was a detailed specification of the best suited methodology and recommendations for data acquisition and implementation of this methodology with global coverage. Furthermore, the project aimed to improve the co-ordination of environmental research in Europe.

The final report summarises the most important outcomes: a detailed specification of the best suited methodology and recommendations for data acquisition and implementation of this methodology with global coverage.