How Eurostat can assist CO2 assessment in small island developing states: a post-Covid estimation of the Seychelles carbon footprint

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are particularly vulnerable to climate change and ought to pay attention to their own contribution through the CO2 emissions resulting from the domestic production and consumption levels. Although poorly responsible of the worldwide carbon emissions by the modest level of their domestic demand, they can nonetheless contribute to the problem because of the global demand for their exported commodities. However, the carbon footprint is hardly assessed by SIDS because of a lack of data about greenhouse gas emissions or national account statistics. Taking the opportunity of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting economic shock, an environmentally-extended input-output model based on Eurostat data on air emissions is used to disentangle the CO2 emissions embodied in the domestic production and international trade, respectively, and to clearly identify the origin of emissions by industry. Not surprisingly, the consumption-based carbon footprint of Seychelles is deemed lower (6.79 tCO2 per capita) than the production-based inventory (9.55 tCO2 p.c.) for this small open economy relying to a large extent on exports of canned tuna and tourism services, hence a decrease of carbon dioxide emissions (-16%) in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Could it be the right time to re-frame the international specialization of Seychelles?