Water consumption and biodiversity: Responses to global emergency events.

Given that it was a once-in-a-century emergency event, the confinement measures related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused diverse disruptions and changes in life and work patterns. These changes significantly affected water consumption both during and after the pandemic, with direct and indirect consequences on biodiversity. However, there has been a lack of holistic evaluation of these responses. Here, we propose a novel framework to study the impacts of this unique global emergency event by embedding an environmentally extended supply-constrained global multi-regional input-output model (MRIO) into the drivers-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework. This framework allowed us to develop scenarios related to COVID-19 confinement measures to quantify country-sector-specific changes in freshwater consumption and the associated changes in biodiversity for the period of 2020-2025. The results suggest progressively diminishing impacts due to the implementation of COVID-19 vaccines and the socio-economic system's self-adjustment to the new normal. In 2020, the confinement measures were estimated to decrease global water consumption by about 5.7% on average across all scenarios when compared with the baseline level with no confinement measures. Further, such a decrease is estimated to lead to a reduction of around 5% in the related pressure on biodiversity. Given the interdependencies and interactions across global supply chains, even those countries and sectors that were not directly affected by the COVID-19 shocks experienced significant impacts: Our results indicate that the supply chain propagations contributed to 79% of the total estimated decrease in water consumption and 84% of the reduction in biodiversity loss on average. Our study demonstrates that the MRIO-enhanced DSPIR framework can help quantify resource pressures and the resultant environmental impacts across supply chains when facing a global emergency event. Further, we recommend the development of more locally based water conservation measures-to mitigate the effects of trade disruptions-and the explicit inclusion of water resources in post-pandemic recovery schemes. In addition, innovations that help conserve natural resources are essential for maintaining environmental gains in the post-pandemic world.

Landscape-Scale Biodiversity Impacts Analysis of Côte d'Ivoire's Cocoa Cultivation along Export Supply Chains.

Agricultural land use for export commodities leads to significant biodiversity impacts. A spatially detailed assessment of these impacts is crucial for implementing effective mitigation policies. Using cocoa cultivation and exports in Côte d'Ivoire as an example, we present a novel framework that combines earth observations, enhanced landscape-scale biodiversity models, and subnational export supply chain data sets to track the tele-connected potential biodiversity impacts of export groups and importing countries. We found that cocoa cultivation accounts for ∼44% of the biodiversity impacts in Côte d'Ivoire's cocoa cultivation areas, with >90% attributable to cocoa exports. The top 10 importing countries account for ∼84% of these impacts. Our method offers improved spatial detail compared to the existing approaches, facilitating the identification of biodiversity impact hotspots. Additionally, the biodiversity impacts of agroforestry cocoa are not always lower compared to full-sun cocoa, especially when agroforestry systems are established in regions of high biodiversity importance. Our transferable framework provides a comprehensive understanding of biodiversity footprint and promotes informed decision-making for sustainable agricultural production, processing, and trade. Our framework's application is currently constrained by the scarcity of detailed supply chain data sets; we underscore the urgent need for improved supply chain transparency to fully unlock the framework's potential.

Case report: Secondary failure to tolvaptan in a patient with SCLC and paraneoplastic SIADH.

The syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) is frequent in lung cancer patients. Here, we report a case with persistent hyponatremia, which suggested malignant SIADH and facilitated an early diagnosis of small cell lung cancer (SCLC). A combined radio-chemotherapy led to a partial remission and resolution of SIADH. An early relapse was indicated by reoccurring severe hyponatremia and increased copeptin levels, which were used as surrogate markers for the antidiuretic hormone (ADH). As palliative immunochemotherapy, together with fluid restriction and solute substitution, were unable to control hyponatremia, treatment with the ADH V2-receptor antagonist tolvaptan was initiated. Over time, the dose of tolvaptan needed to be increased, paralleled by a well-documented exponential increase of copeptin levels. In summary and conclusion, this is a rare case of a secondary failure to tolvaptan with unique documentary evidence of increasing copeptin levels. This observation supports the hypothesis that exceedingly high ADH levels may lead to competitive displacement of tolvaptan from the V2 receptor.

Biodiversity Impact Assessment Considering Land Use Intensities and Fragmentation.

Land use is a major threat to terrestrial biodiversity. Life cycle assessment is a tool that can assess such threats and thereby support environmental decision-making. Within the Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (GLAM) project, the Life Cycle Initiative hosted by UN Environment aims to create a life cycle impact assessment method across multiple impact categories, including land use impacts on ecosystem quality represented by regional and global species richness. A working group of the GLAM project focused on such land use impacts and developed new characterization factors to combine the strengths of two separate recent advancements in the field: the consideration of land use intensities and land fragmentation. The data sets to parametrize the underlying model are also updated from previous models. The new characterization factors cover five species groups (plants, amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles) and five broad land use types (cropland, pasture, plantations, managed forests, and urban land) at three intensity levels (minimal, light, and intense). They are available at the level of terrestrial ecoregions and countries. This paper documents the development of the characterization factors, provides practical guidance for their use, and critically assesses the strengths and remaining shortcomings.

Understanding the needs of women undergoing breast ultrasound: Are male radiologists still needed?

INTRODUCTION: A trend towards less male radiologists specializing in breast ultrasound was observed. A common notion in the field of breast radiology is, that female patients feel more comfortable being treated by female radiologists. The aim of the study was to understand and report the needs of women undergoing breast ultrasound with regards to the sex of the radiologist performing the investigation. METHODS: Informed consent was obtained from all patients prior to inclusion in a prospective bi-center quality study. At center 1 (72 patients), the women were examined exclusively by female radiologists, at center 2 (100 patients) only by male radiologists. After the examination the patients were asked about their experiences and their wishes for the future. RESULTS: Overall, women made no distinction between female and male radiologists; 25% of them wanted a female radiologist and 1.2% wanted a male radiologist. The majority (74%) stated that it made no difference whether a female or male radiologist performed the examination. The majority of women in group 2, who were investigated exclusively by male radiologists, stated that they had no preferences with regard to the sex of the radiologist (93%); 5% of the women wished to be investigated solely by a female radiologist and 2% exclusively by a male radiologist. DISCUSSION: The majority of women undergoing breast ultrasound are unconcerned about the radiologist's sex. It would appear that women examined by male radiologists are less selective about the sex of the examining radiologist. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Written informed consent was obtained from all patients. All patient data were anonymized. The physicians had no access to any further personal data. National regulations did not require dedicated ethics approval with anonymized lists or retrospective questionnaires.

Global site-specific health impacts of fossil energy, steel mills, oil refineries and cement plants.

Climate change and particulate matter air pollution present major threats to human well-being by causing impacts on human health. Both are connected to key air pollutants such as carbon dioxide (CO[Formula: see text]), primary fine particulate matter (PM[Formula: see text]), sulfur dioxide (SO[Formula: see text]), nitrogen oxides (NO[Formula: see text]) and ammonia (NH[Formula: see text]), which are primarily emitted from energy-intensive industrial sectors. We present the first study to consistently link a broad range of emission measurements for these substances with site-specific technical data, emission models, and atmospheric fate and effect models to quantify health impacts caused by nearly all global fossil power plants, steel mills, oil refineries and cement plants. The resulting health impact patterns differ substantially from far less detailed earlier studies due to the high resolution of included data, highlighting in particular the key role of emission abatement at individual coal-consuming industrial sites in densely populated areas of Asia (Northern and North-Eastern India, Java in Indonesia, Eastern China), Western Europe (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands) as well as in the US. Of greatest health concern are the high SO[Formula: see text] emissions in India, which stand out due to missing flue gas treatment and cause a particularly high share of local health impacts despite a limited number of emission sites. At the same time, the massive infrastructure and export capacity build-up in China in recent years is taking a substantial toll on regional and global health and requires more stringent regulation than in the rest of the world due to unfavorable environmental conditions and high population densities. The current phase-out of highly emitting industries in Europe is found not to have started with sites having the greatest health impacts. Our detailed site-specific emission and impact inventory is able to highlight more effective alternatives and to track future progress.

Toward sustainable reprocessing and valorization of sulfidic copper tailings: Scenarios and prospective LCA.

There has been increasing attention recently to reprocessing of mining waste, which aims to recover potentially valuable materials such as metals and other byproducts from untapped resources. Mining waste valorization may offer environmental advantages over traditional make-waste-dispose approaches. However, a quantitative environmental assessment for large-scale reprocessing, accounting for future trends and a broad set of environmental indicators, is still lacking. This article assesses the life cycle impacts and resource recovery potential associated with alternative waste management through mine tailings reprocessing at a regional scale. Sulfidic copper tailings in the EU were selected as a case study. We perform prospective life cycle assessments of future reprocessing scenarios by considering emerging resource recovery technologies, market supply & demand forecasts, and energy system changes. We find that some reprocessing and valorization technologies in future scenarios may have reduction potentials for multiple impact indicators. However, results for indicators such as climate change and energy-related impacts suggest that specific scenarios perform sub-optimally due to energy/resource-intensive processes. The environmental performance of reprocessing of tailings is influenced by technology routes, secondary material market penetration, and choices of displaced products. The trade-off between climate change and energy related impacts, on the one hand, and toxicity impacts, on the other hand, requires critical appraisal by decision makers when promoting alternative tailings reprocessing. Implementing value recovery strategies for building material production, can save up to 3 Mt. CO2-eq in 2050 compared to business as usual, helping the copper sector mitigate climate impacts. Additional climate mitigation efforts in demand-side management are needed though to achieve the 1.5 °C climate target. This work provides a scientific basis for decision-making toward more sustainable reprocessing and valorization of sulfidic tailings.

Can Forest Management Practices Counteract Species Loss Arising from Increasing European Demand for Forest Biomass under Climate Mitigation Scenarios?

Forests are home to many species and provide biomass for material and energy. Here, we modeled the potential global species extinction risk from future scenarios of climate mitigation and EU28 forest management. We considered the continuation of current practices, the adoption of closer-to-nature management (low-intensity practices), and set-asides (conversion to unharvested forestland) on portions of EU28 forestland under two climate mitigation pathways as well as the consequences for the wood trade. Expanding set-aside to more than 25% of EU28 currently managed forestland by 2100 increased the global extinction risk compared to the continuation of current practices. This outcome stems from a projected increase in EU forest biomass imports, partially from biodiversity-vulnerable regions to compensate for a decrease in domestic harvest. Conversely, closer-to-nature management on up to 37.5% of EU28 forestland lowered extinction risks. Increasing the internal production and partially sourcing imported biomass from low-intensity managed areas lowered the species extinction footprint even further. However, low-intensity practices could not entirely compensate for the increased extinction risk under a high climate mitigation scenario with greater demand for lignocellulosic crops and energywood. When developing climate mitigation strategies, it is crucial to assess forest biomass supply chains for the early detection of extinction risks in non-EU regions and for developing strategies to prevent increase of global impacts.

Hotspots of Mining-Related Biodiversity Loss in Global Supply Chains and the Potential for Reduction through Renewable Electricity.

Anticipated infrastructure growth and energy transition may exacerbate biodiversity loss through increased demand for mining products. This study uses an enhanced multiregional input-output database (REX, Resolved EXIOBASE) and supply chain impact mapping (SCIM) method to assess global biodiversity loss associated with mining-related land use. We identify hotspots in the supply chain of mining products, compare the impact of fossil and renewable electricity, and estimate the share of mining in total global impacts. We found that half of the global mining-related biodiversity loss occurs in Indonesia, Australia, and New Caledonia. Major international trade flows of embodied biodiversity loss involve Indonesia's coal exports to China and India, New Caledonia's nickel exports to Japan and Australia, and Australia's iron and bauxite exports to China. Key end-consumers include China's growing infrastructure and the EU's and USA's household consumption. Electricity generation accounted for 10% of global mining-related biodiversity loss in 2014. The impact of coal-fired electricity was 10 times higher than that of renewables per unit of electricity generated. Globally, mining contributes to less than 1% of the total land use-related biodiversity loss, which is dominated by agriculture. Our results provide transparency in sourcing more sustainable mining products and underline synergies in fostering renewables to meet local biodiversity and global climate targets.

Regionalized Life Cycle Inventories of Global Sulfidic Copper Tailings.

Worldwide, an issue of copper production is the generation of mine waste with varying characteristics. This waste can pollute natural environments, and in particular, the heavy metal emissions of the tailings may pose long-term consequences. Currently, life cycle assessments of mine tailings are hampered by both limited data availability in the metal production value chain and lack of appropriate methodologies. We collect data from 431 active copper mine sites using a combination of information available from the market research and technical handbooks to develop site-specific life cycle inventories for disposal of tailings. The approach considers the influences of copper ore composition and local hydrology for dynamically estimating leached metals of tailings at each site. The analysis reveals that together, copper tailings from the large (i.e., porphyry) and medium-size copper deposits (i.e., volcanogenic massive sulfide and sediment-hosted) contribute to more than three quarters of the total global freshwater ecotoxicity impacts of copper tailings. This strongly correlates with hydrological conditions, leading to high infiltration rates. The generated inventories vary locally, even within single countries, showcasing the importance of site-specific models. Our study provides site-specific, dynamic emission models and thus improves the accuracy of tailing's inventories and toxicity-related impacts.

Global Assessment of Agricultural Productivity Losses from Soil Compaction and Water Erosion.

To guide us toward a sustainable future, the impacts of human activities on natural resources need to be understood and quantified. In this study on global agriculture, we use a Life Cycle Assessment framework to estimate potential long-term soil productivity losses caused by soil compaction and water erosion due to agricultural crop production. We combine several data sets to model spatially resolved Life Cycle Inventory information at the global level and multiply results with characterization factors from a previous publication. The global picture shows a compaction-stressed "Global North" and an erosion-stressed "Global South", with some countries and regions in between, for example, China and parts of South America. Results show that both compaction and water erosion impacts matter at the global level and that overall potential long-term productivity losses of 10-20% can be expected, with high relative impacts on low input production systems. These losses might limit long-term agricultural productivity and lead to additional land use change. Our work adds to and extends the discussion of global assessments of soil degradation. Furthermore, we prove the suggested framework to be applicable and useful for Life Cycle Assessments and other studies and provide results that can be used in such global assessments.

A highly resolved MRIO database for analyzing environmental footprints and Green Economy Progress.

Moving towards a greener economy requires detailed information on the environmental impacts of global value chains. Environmentally-extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis plays a key role in providing this information, but current databases are limited in their spatial (e.g. EXIOBASE3) or sectoral resolution (e.g. Eora26 and GTAP) as well as their indicator coverage. Here, we present an automated, transparent, and comparably time-efficient approach to improve the resolution, quality, and indicator coverage of an existing MRIO database. Applied on EXIOBASE3, we disaggregate and improve the limited spatial resolution by weighting each element with country and sector specific shares derived from Eora26, FAOSTAT, and previous studies. The resolved database covers 189 countries, 163 sectors, and a cutting-edge set of environmental and socio-economic indicators from the years 1995 to 2015. The importance of our improvements is highlighted by the EU-27 results, which reveal a significant increase in the EU's water stress and biodiversity loss footprint as a result of the spatial disaggregation and regionalized assessment. In 2015, a third of the EU's water stress and half of its biodiversity loss footprint was caused in the countries aggregated as rest of the world in EXIOBASE3. This was mainly attributed to the EU's food imports, which induce comparably high water stress and biodiversity loss in Egypt and Madagascar, respectively. In a second example, we use our database to add carbon, water stress and biodiversity loss footprints to the Green Economy Progress (GEP) Measurement Framework. Most countries have not achieved their environmental target and many countries, facing strong future population growth, show increasing footprints. Our results demonstrate that far more action is needed to move towards a greener economy globally, especially through supply chain management. The attached database provides detailed information on the environmental impacts of global value chains to plan efficient strategies for a greener economy.

Globally Regionalized Monthly Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Particulate Matter.

This work provides a globally regionalized approach for quantifying particulate matter (PM2.5) health impacts. Atmospheric transport and pollutant chemistry of primary particulate matter, sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and ammonia (NH3) from stack emissions were modeled and used to calculate monthly high-resolution maps of global characterization factors that can be used for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and risk assessment. These characterization factors are applied to a global data set of coal power emissions. The results show large regional and temporal differences in health impacts per kg of emission and per amount of coal power generation (5-1300 DALY TWh-1). While small emission reductions of PM2.5 and SO2 from coal power lead to similar health benefits across densely populated areas of Asia and Europe, we find that larger emission reductions result in up to three times higher health benefits in parts of Asia because of the nonlinear health responses to pollution exposure changes. Hence, many regions in Asia benefit disproportionately much from large coal power PM2.5 and SO2 emission reductions. NOx emission reductions can lead to equally high health benefits, where unfavorable atmospheric conditions coincide with elevated NH3 background pollution and large population (e.g., in Central Europe, Indonesia, or Japan but also numerous other places).

Regional Carrying Capacities of Freshwater Consumption-Current Pressure and Its Sources.

Sustainable freshwater management is an essential target for sustainability. The concept of planetary boundaries evaluates whether the environmental loads from humans are within the carrying capacity of the environment at a global level, while the region-specific assessment of carrying capacities of freshwater consumption can complement the global-scale sustainability assessment by shedding light on regional sustainability. We show that 24% of the total freshwater consumption exceeds the regional carrying capacities based on spatially and temporally explicit analysis (monthly data for around 11 000 watersheds). Although 19% of the current total freshwater consumption is determined as "luxury consumption" beyond basic needs, approximately 60% of the exceedance is attributed to basic needs of freshwater for sustaining human life. International trade alleviates the overall pressure on carrying capacity by approximately 4.8% (18.9 billion m3) at a global level through virtual water trade; however, several producer countries demonstrate additional overconsumption beyond the regional carrying capacities, while importer countries that can do so mitigate overconsumption. Appropriate irrigation water management and the location of crop production are the keys to maintain our freshwater consumption levels within the regional carrying capacities on a global scale. However, measures that necessitate the consideration of watershed-specific environmental and economic conditions are desirable.

Assessing Impacts on the Natural Resource Soil in Life Cycle Assessment: Methods for Compaction and Water Erosion.

There are currently limited life cycle impact assessment methods existing for assessing impacts on the natural resource soil. In this paper, we develop methods for the assessment of compaction and water erosion impacts within one framework, which can be expanded with additional degradation processes in the future. Our methods assess potential long-term impacts from agricultural activities on the production capacity of soils and are able to distinguish between different management choices such as machinery selection and tillage practices. Characterization factors are provided as global raster data sets at high spatial resolution (∼1 km) and for larger geographic units including uncertainties of spatial aggregation. Uncertainties due to variability of climate and weather are provided where possible. The application of the methods is demonstrated and discussed in a simplified case study. Results show that in a highly mechanized scenario of global agriculture without any conservation measures, long-term yearly soil productivity losses due to compaction and water erosion can amount to up to double-digit percentages for major crops. This confirms the relevance of compaction and water erosion impacts for agricultural LCAs.

Water scarcity footprint of hydropower based on a seasonal approach - Global assessment with sensitivities of model assumptions tested on specific cases.

According to ISO 14046 the quantification of the water scarcity footprint (WSFP) of hydropower reservoirs has to consider (1) the evaporation of water from the surface of the reservoir, (2) the baseline evaporation of water of the same area before the reservoir has been built, and (3) the water scarcity index of the location of the reservoir on a spatially and temporally explicit level. When a reservoir has a storing function, e.g., for irrigation in the dry season, monthly water scarcity indexes have to be used in order to calculate the WSFP, since storage in wet seasons and release in dry seasons can counteract water scarcity and lead to a reduction of overall water scarcity in the watershed. This paper builds on previous research regarding detailed hydropower modeling and extends the water scarcity assessment to include and advance new methods for identifying sensitivities in monthly WSFP of hydropower due to the choice of impact assessment methods. We applied the global analysis to 1473 hydropower plants covering >100 countries, and added a detailed assessment for a subset of important power plants to discuss the limitations of global assessments. We thereby provide the most complete WSFP of global hydropower with state-of-the-art methods, assess the robustness of the global model and different methodological choices, and provide new monthly average AWARE CFs on watershed level. The results show that water scarcity can often be mitigated if the net evaporation is compensated by the storage effects. The two water scarcity metrics applied lead to larger differences than expected, since the monthly dynamics of dams can lead to stronger differences than the differences in the applied water scarcity factors. The new insights help to better understand the WSFP of hydropower and its uncertainties.

Improving water ecosystem sustainability of urban water system by management strategies optimization.

Water management strategies play an important role in water shortage alleviation. This study evaluates the cost and water ecosystem benefit of 14 water management strategies in Beijing in the future scenarios for 2020 and 2035. In addition, optimal implements of abatement strategies are obtained within the context of legislated targets, with the consideration of interaction among strategies. The result shows that Beijing can meet its commitments for total water use and pollution control by the water management strategies implementation in both 2020 and 2035. For 14 water management strategies analyzed in this study, 5 options with negative abatement cost value achieve 12.2-24.1% of the total water ecosystem benefit in 2020 and 2035. Wastewater reclamation is the most efficient strategy in water ecosystem impact (WEI) reduction, which contributes 38.4% of the total WEI reduction with an abatement cost of 1.6 Yuan/m3 H2O -eq. However, the sequence of optimal strategy implementation rate is not in accordance with the abatement cost of the strategies. The most cost-effective option is the water-efficient shower head, while the highest implementation rate is found for promotion of production technologies. A comparison between water management optimization with and without the consideration of interactions among strategies shows that taking the interaction among strategies into account imposes almost no influence on the total WEI reduction. But it has impacts on optimal implementation rate of each water management option and the cost estimation (+10.8%) of water management implementation. Such a systematic analysis of water management strategies provides general recommendations on sustainable water resource management in water scarce regions.

Defining freshwater as a natural resource: A framework linking water use to the area of protection natural resources.

PURPOSE: While many examples have shown unsustainable use of freshwater resources, existing LCIA methods for water use do not comprehensively address impacts to natural resources for future generations. This framework aims to (1) define freshwater resource as an item to protect within the Area of Protection (AoP) natural resources, (2) identify relevant impact pathways affecting freshwater resources, and (3) outline methodological choices for impact characterization model development. METHOD: Considering the current scope of the AoP natural resources, the complex nature of freshwater resources and its important dimensions to safeguard safe future supply, a definition of freshwater resource is proposed, including water quality aspects. In order to clearly define what is to be protected, the freshwater resource is put in perspective through the lens of the three main safeguard subjects defined by Dewulf et al. (2015). In addition, an extensive literature review identifies a wide range of possible impact pathways to freshwater resources, establishing the link between different inventory elementary flows (water consumption, emissions and land use) and their potential to cause long-term freshwater depletion or degradation. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Freshwater as a resource has a particular status in LCA resource assessment. First, it exists in the form of three types of resources: flow, fund, or stock. Then, in addition to being a resource for human economic activities (e.g. hydropower), it is above all a non-substitutable support for life that can be affected by both consumption (source function) and pollution (sink function). Therefore, both types of elementary flows (water consumption and emissions) should be linked to a damage indicator for freshwater as a resource. Land use is also identified as a potential stressor to freshwater resources by altering runoff, infiltration and erosion processes as well as evapotranspiration. It is suggested to use the concept of recovery period to operationalize this framework: when the recovery period lasts longer than a given period of time, impacts are considered to be irreversible and fall into the concern of freshwater resources protection (i.e. affecting future generations), while short-term impacts effect the AoP ecosystem quality and human health directly. It is shown that it is relevant to include this concept in the impact assessment stage in order to discriminate the long-term from the short-term impacts, as some dynamic fate models already do. CONCLUSION: This framework provides a solid basis for the consistent development of future LCIA methods for freshwater resources, thereby capturing the potential long-term impacts that could warn decision makers about potential safe water supply issues in the future.

A new method for analyzing sustainability performance of global supply chains and its application to material resources.

Supply chains become increasingly globalized. Multi-regional input-output databases contain all the information to assess impacts along the value chain, but standard calculation routines to track the impacts of any sector along the global upstream and downstream value chain are missing. Mapping the impacts of materials has been a particular challenge owing to difficulties with double-counting. This is attributed to the strong intertwining of the material supply chain meaning that different materials occur in the supply chains of other materials. Here, we present a new method which can be applied to any MRIO system to track the impacts of any sector or region without double-counting upstream and downstream the global value chain. We apply this approach to EXIOBASE3 and implement a cutting-edge set of regionalized environmental impact categories and socio-economic indicators. Applied to global material production, our method shows that the issue of double-counting (prevented in this study) would overestimate global impacts of materials by up to 30%. In contrast, assessing only the direct impacts would lead to an underestimation by ~20%. Our evaluation further reveals that 25-35% of global material-related impacts are embodied in trade among ten world regions. Thereby, we identify the major international trade relations of key materials and found a clear trend of industrialized nations causing impacts in less developed economies. It was further revealed that during 1995-2011, the share of materials in total global climate change impacts has remained almost constant at ~50%, but total impacts have significantly increased for minerals and fossils. Our results demonstrate the importance for improved environmental policy strategies that target several stages of the global value chain. The methodology is provided as Matlab tool and can be applied to any material, industrial sector and region to track the related impacts upstream and downstream the global value chain.