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Globalized supply chains: Emergent telecouplings in Mexico’s beef economy and environmental leakages

This image presents the paper's conceptual framework, which depicts the beef-corn production system as Mexico integrated into the global economy. Feeder calves are sent from Central America, corn is sent from the United States, and the resulting beef is exported to the United States. But it becomes harder to track international environmental effects of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions arising from changes in the beef supply chain caused by trade liberalization.
Figure 1: Trade Liberalization and Structural Change in Mexico’s Cattle Sector: Telecouplings and Environmental Leakages. As Mexico integrated into the global economy, goods moved freely across borders, and it became harder to track environmental effects arising from changes in the beef supply chain caused by trade liberalization.

SIMMONS, WALKER, WAYLEN – Globalized supply chains: Emergent tele couplings in Mexico’s beef economy and environmental leakages

Yankuic Galvan-Miyoshi, Cynthia Simmons, Robert Walker, Gilberto Aranda Osorio, Petro Martinez Hernandez, Ema Maldonado-Simán, Barney Warf, Marta Astier, Michael Waylen

Article first published online: 5 Mar 2022

DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102486

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes how trade liberalization in Mexico, particularly following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has transformed that nation’s cattle economy into a feedlot system manifesting multiple telecouplings and based on the transnational provision of inputs. A conceptual model is presented that suggests how environmental effects involving land use and GHG emissions emerge from changes in the beef supply chain. The article then presents an empirical analysis establishing that the production of corn and beef has intensified in the wake of NAFTA, and that deforestation rates have declined over the same period. Evidence is also presented showing that this has not precipitated a land sparing effect, given the leakage of deforestation into Central America, which supplies Mexican feedlots with 36 % of their source materials. The article calculates associated GHG emissions and establishes that enteric fermentation dominates deforestation as a source, and that ∼14% of GHGs produced by the post-NAFTA Mexican supply chain are emitted in Central America. This raises accounting questions for signatories to the Paris Climate Treaty, given commitments are nation-based.

Read the full publication at Global Environmental Change.