Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2026, at 12:15 pm
Venue: Seminar Room Bruguier Pacini, DEM
Speaker and Title:
Cristina Colapietra, University of Siena
Ecologically Unequal Exchange in the Bangladesh–EU Textile Trade (1990–2021)
Abstract:
Global value chain restructuring has intensified material and social interdependencies, simultaneously reinforcing ecological and distributive asymmetries. Although Ecologically Unequal Exchange (EUE) is well documented at the macro level, sector-specific dynamics related to value capture and embodied socio-ecological inputs remain underexplored, limiting our understanding of how unequal exchange is reproduced through particular production networks and value-chain configurations.
This study examines EUE in the Bangladesh–EU textile trade over the period 1990–2021, a highly concentrated and structurally asymmetric segment of global apparel production embedded within an export-led development model heavily reliant on textile manufacturing and characterised by environmental stress, low-wage labour, and gendered vulnerabilities.
Using an environmentally extended multi-regional input–output framework, the paper quantifies embodied materials, energy, and gender-disaggregated labour, and develops a sector-level EUE indicator comparing value added retained with embodied socio-ecological inputs. The results provide empirical evidence for debates on ecological redistribution, trade justice, and the governance of global value chains.