Wealth, Trade and Environment in Brazil and Italy. an Emergy-based Comparison of Carrying Capacity, Economic Performance and Wellbeing

Time and spatial scales matter. Time series analyses have been proven to be useful in capturing tendencies of a country’s economical behavior. Large-scale evaluations at national scale are essential to highlight the basic parameters relevant to smaller scale case studies (regional, local, and sectors). Due to the importance and variability of those parameters or indicators over time and spatial scales, national evaluations should be updated every year. The aim of this work is to investigate time series of Brazilian and Italian economies on the basis of the emergy synthesis method, building on existing statistical data and accurate matter, energy and monetary flow assessment. Main objective is to provide comprehensive indicators of carrying capacity, performance and wellbeing over time, pointing out the differences between a developing nation, the economy of which is mainly based on the agricultural sector and raw commodities export (Brazil) and a developed nation characterized by industrial manufacturing, tourism and service sectors (Italy). Focus is placed on emergy indicators capable of accounting for societal metabolism (emergy per capita, emergy per €, emergy per ha, environmental loading ratio, emergy yield ratio) and shedding light on conventional monetary assessments. Trade between Brazil and Italy is also investigated (coffee, soy, wood, sugar, lubricants, parts and accessories of machinery and cars, etc) in order to stress issues of fair and equitable trade in terms of balanced emergy exchange. Emergy indicators showed that the Brazil uses great percentage of renewable resources on the total, resulting in low environmental load and good sustainability, although an oscillation tendency is shown. Results are the opposite for Italy, since it uses large amounts of non-renewable and imported resources. As for the trade between the countries, a huge disparity is shown in terms of emergy values: Brazil exported 4.97E+22 seJ to Italy and imported 7.83E+20 seJ in 2008.