Clunkers for Mobility? A critical environmental justice perspective on the EU’s exports of used cars to the Global South

Abstract: In the face of climate change, governments in the Global North have decided on various decarbonisation plans. With the transport sector causing more than a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions, its decarbonisation has become a central debate. Yet, plans for a sustainable mobility system are largely focused on local and regional scales, neglecting the global entanglements of the supply chains that provide for local transportation, especially in the automotive industry. Examining the international trade with used cars, this thesis shines light on global connections at the end of these supply chains and their implications. Taking the European Union as an example, this thesis shows how used vehicles are displaced from the Global North to the Global South in the world-system; resulting in significant environmental and health-related consequences. Based on a political ecology framework from a critical realist perspective, this thesis examines the global dynamics of the EU’s used car trade, its significance for concerns about climate change and environmental pollution, and the conditions creating an enabling environment for the trade. It shows how the legally and socially flexible understanding of the traded objects themselves reinforces those conditions and blurs the answer to the question of who is responsible for the vehicle’s impacts. Consequently, it critically discusses to what extent debates about environmental justice and the ‘polluter pays principle’ are applicable and contested. This case illustrates how complex interactions make (the for environmental justice claims) necessary categorization of ‘polluters’ and ‘burden bearers’ uncertain and complicate debates about responsibility for environmental problems.