Economic globalization and concomitant growth in international trade since the late 1990s have profoundly reorganized global production activities and related CO₂ emissions. Here we show trade among developing nations (i.e., South–South trade) has more than doubled between 2004 and 2011, which reflects a new phase of globalization. Some production activities are relocating from China and India to other developing countries, particularly raw materials and intermediate goods production in energy-intensive sectors. In turn, the growth of CO₂ emissions embodied in Chinese exports has slowed or reversed, while the emissions embodied in exports from less-developed regions such as Vietnam and Bangladesh have surged. Although China’s emissions may be peaking, ever more complex supply chains are distributing energy-intensive industries and their CO₂ emissions throughout the global South. This trend may seriously undermine international efforts to reduce global emissions that increasingly rely on rallying voluntary contributions of more, smaller, and less-developed nations.

Globalization pushes production and consumption to geographically diverse locations and generates a variety of sizeable opportunities and challenges. The distribution and associated effects of short-lived primary fine particulate matter (PM _2.5 ), a representative of local pollution, are significantly affected by the consumption through global supply chain. Tele-connection is used here to represent the link between production and consumption activity at large distances. In this study, we develop a global consumption-based primary PM _2.5 emission inventory to track primary PM _2.5 emissions embodied in the supply chain and evaluate the extent to which local PM _2.5 emissions are triggered by international trade. We further adopt consumption-based accounting and identify the global original source that produced the emissions. We find that anthropogenic PM _2.5 emissions from industrial sectors accounted for 24 Tg globally in 2007; approximately 30% (7.2 Tg) of these emissions were embodied in export of products principally from Brazil, South Africa, India and China (3.8 Tg) to developed countries. Large differences (up to 10 times) in the embodied emissions intensity between net importers and exporters greatly increased total global PM _2.5 emissions. Tele-connecting production and consumption activity provides valuable insights with respect to mitigating long-range transboundary air pollution and prompts concerted efforts aiming at more environmentally conscious globalization.