Climate change, geography and trade agreements: A perspective of Asian bilateral trade

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320363 April 25, 2025 18 / 23 PLOS One Trade agreement, climate change and geography activities are well performed compared with natural economic activities to increase the export level between Asian trading partners. Climate change (CO2 emissions) has 528% (estimated by simultaneous approach) detri- mental effects on the ecosystem and are deteriorating the global environmental quality grad- ually. Despite their environmental effects, CO2 emissions also have a remarkable impact on international trade approximately 167.6% on average, particularly bilateral exports. Countries should sign trade agreements and formulate the policy regarding geographic-oriented CO2 emissions, indicating that the effects of CO2 emissions are diverse from country to coun- try, region to region, and geographic landscape. Consequently, bilateral exports are affected (which means that firms make decisions for production and export strategies based on CO2 emission affected areas), and trade agreements are also changed in their terms and conditions in nature. Countries should control 10.7% economic growth that causes increase in CO2 emissions through scale effect. However, structural effect can reduce CO2 emissions through advancement in technology, which can lead bilateral exports between the trading partners. In addition, PTAs, plurilateral trade agreements, WTOX clauses should be signed by each trading countries to augment 14.23% export level. More precisely, all trade agreements should

be also based on geographic and economic factor including environmental standards. This study presents the limitations to examine the simultaneous impact on the bilateral exports of geographic factors. For instance, the total land-use area by mountain, desert, sea- shore, and urbanization is not discussed in our model. More precisely, the Asia covers greatest mountainous area of the Earth’s total land approximately 30% (44579000 squared kilome- ters) e.g., Himalayas, Karakoram Hindu Kush and Pamirs, which substantially engrosses to yield numerous agricultural products, suggesting that mountainous induces exports could be enhanced through export-oriented strategies. Although, mountainous area can raise the transport costs. Likewise, it is noteworthy that total desert area of Asia has been concealed by 32% (6344000 square mile) of the globally, i.e., Arabian and Gobi deserts, which sheds light on transport infrastructure development concern over increment of bilateral exports. Subsequently, Asia has also largest coastline area about 62800 kilometers (e.g., Arctic, Pacific and Indian Oceans) that substantially influences commercial-oriented infrastructure, use for trade-oriented activities along with coastal lines. The agglomeration of economic activities, market access, and production costs are also not included. More precisely, constellation of economic activities, e.g., specific commercial or business and people areas, manufacturing units, industries based on location choice remark-

ably effect the bilateral exports by reducing the transportation costs, enhance the access to the suppliers, technology spillover, quality of the product and so on. Furthermore, market access (product or service selling ability of the company) and production costs (expenses are bearded by the producers) can have substantial influence on bilateral exports. The reason may behind that these factors drastically improve the efficiency and productivity of the export-oriented firms and companies. Thus, we can expect future research to cover land area by mountains, deserts, and seashores, which can be estimated to determine international trade, and the pres- ervation of natural resources, market access, and man-made skills as substantial factors for economic development through trade channels. Author contributions Conceptualization: Zahid Hussain. Data curation: Qianxu Liang. Formal analysis: Qianxu Liang, Zahid Hussain, Chaonan Wang. Funding acquisition: Qianxu Liang.