Disaster trade: the hidden footprint of UK production overseas

Abstract

Disasters like floods, droughts and landslides are a growing risk for millions of people in the global South. Yet in our globalising world, they are increasingly connected to processes originating in the global North. Focusing on imports from Cambodia, Sri Lanka and the South Asian ‘brick belt’, this project examines how British trade shapes the disasters that afflict the UK’s trading partners. As it exemplifies, the UK’s trade in garments, bricks and tea serves to displace emissions and environmental degradation, whilst intensifying the impacts of natural hazards linked to climate change. These complex impacts constitute the UK’s hidden disaster footprint.