The Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption (GEIC) Indicator

This dashboard is provided, free of charge, as a resource for users to explore the sources and sinks of environmental impact and risk associated with commodity supply chains. The dashboard was developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute (including the Sustainable Consumption Production group within the York Centre) and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee to support the development of an indicator set for monitoring the overseas impacts of UK consumption. The results, however, are relevant for global analyses of production and consumption activities.

Dashboard development was supported by the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund through the Trade, Development and the Environment Hub project (project ES/S008160/1), and the Trase Project. Production of the underlying data set was commissioned and supported by Defra. We are also grateful for collaborations with Florence Pendrill, Chandrakant Singh and Martin Persson (Chalmers University of Technology) and Thomas Kastner (Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre) who have provided underpinning data and methodological assistance.

We plan to update and improve the dashboard periodically as newer data, methods and indicator sets become available.

Following the 2023 indicator update, we ran three webinars introducing the GEIC indicator. You can watch the recordings linked below to find out more.

• Technical introduction – Explains what the indicator is, and about the methods and modelling underpinning it.
• UK policy introduction – Explains what the indicator is, how to navigate the dashboard and how to use the data as an evidence source for UK policymakers.
• Global Biodiversity Framework introduction – The GEIC indicator is a component indicator against Target 16 of the GBF. This webinar explains what it is, how to use it in national reporting, and why you might wish to do so.

In advance of the CBD COP16 we've prepared some brief 'factsheets' that provide an overview of a country/territory consumption footprint using GEIC data for regions covered by our EXIOBASE model version. You can find them here.

The data used in this dashboard are created within SEI’s Input-Output Trade Analysis (IOTA) framework, built around a hybridised physical-financial Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) model (described in Croft et al. 2018, 2021, 2023 with additional detail on the implementation with GTAP found here). In this application, IOTA utilises commodity level production and trade data along with monetary financial flows to provide estimates of the movement of goods from national-level points of production through to final consumption, regardless of supply chain length and complexity. These supply chains are extended via the application of environmental impact indicators, which in turn allow for the flows of embedded impacts to be captured.

The subsequent results allow for a range of perspectives to be assessed, compared and analysed, from the production or consumption end of the supply chain, across individual or multiple commodities, and over a range of metrics.

You can download the full data set here (for EXIOBASE version) and here (for GTAP version).

Terms and conditions of use: We make the data freely available for use. Whilst we have undergone steps to check the quality and accuracy of data provided, we provide on an 'as is' basis. The user assumes the entire risk associated within any use made of this information and SEI, JNCC and other partners do not accept any liability for damage arising from the use of the information, and make no representation regarding the advisability or suitability of specific decisions made by the user. If using charts, data, information, graphs or maps from this site, attribution is required. You must clearly attribute the work to the CommodityFootprints.earth platform and provide a link to https://www.commodityfootprints.earth.