| 08 May 2026
Global consumption-based deforestation carbon emissions and regional hotspots: 2001–2020
Abstract. The consumption-based carbon emissions dataset for deforestation provides an important perspective for developing effective emission mitigation policies. However, existing datasets are largely limited to national-scale and lack spatially explicit, high-resolution data at the global level. Here, we present a global, gridded dataset of consumption-based deforestation carbon emissions at 1 km resolution for 2001–2020. The dataset integrates spatial information on road networks, deforestation, and forest carbon fluxes with country-level global trade statistics. Our dataset shows that trade-related deforestation emissions amount to 39.6 Gt CO2e, constituting 31.8 % of global deforestation emissions. This new dataset fills a critical gap in spatially explicit consumption-based deforestation emissions data, and supports the development of targeted mitigation strategies from the consumer perspective. It also provides a valuable input for climate and carbon cycle models to assess the contribution of consumption-driven deforestation to global warming. Datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28091879 (Tang et al., 2024).
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Earth System Science Data.
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Tang et al. solve an important consumption attribution gap by creating the first annual global 1 km gridded dataset attributing intra-country deforestation carbon emissions to countries consuming trade-based products from 2001 to 2020. The dataset was created using a spatial multi-regional input-output framework, which disaggregates national emissions to grid cells based on data for deforestation, road characteristics, and export priority zones. Export priority zones were chosen based on results from a sensitivity analysis of deforestation patch sizes and road densities, with zones subsequently chosen based on spatial plausibility criteria. Overall, this paper is structured well and addresses a critical gap in the literature. With minor revisions, this paper will be ready for publication in Earth System Science Data. The authors must address minor concerns by adding methodological details, correcting minor typographical errors, and adding more figures to the results. Specifically, ranking the global net importers of deforestation and providing additional visual representation (e.g. bar charts) for consumption-based deforestation emissions footprints in specific regions for the United States and China would support the study’s data.
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