Environmental dynamics in the international trade of Spanish wine protected designations of origin (PDOs)

International trade has significantly expanded over the past few decades, mainly due to globalization and economic liberalization. This growth has brought attention to the environmental risks of exchanging goods and services among nations. While a growing body of literature has discussed the potential environmental advantages of international trade using the environmental Kuznets curve framework, the findings still need to be more conclusive. In this context, this study has explored the dynamic relationships between international trade, carbon emissions, and the competitiveness of Spanish wineries integrated into origin appellations to investigate how the increase in exports influences environmental degradation. With an autoregressive vector model, it has been found that the expansion of international trade is a limitation for the strategy of fighting climate change in the short term, but that the efforts made to reduce the carbon footprint are effectively consolidated and counteract the disruptions to the goal caused by the expansion of international trade. Such findings are relevant to the wine sector, providing insight into effectively reducing carbon emissions and maintaining competitiveness in an ever-evolving international trade landscape.