Summary
The international industrial ecology (IE) research community and United Nations (UN) Environment have, for the first time, agreed on an authoritative and comprehensive data set for global ...material extraction and trade covering 40 years of global economic activity and natural resource use. This new data set is becoming the standard information source for decision making at the UN in the context of the post‐2015 development agenda, which acknowledges the strong links between sustainable natural resource management, economic prosperity, and human well‐being. Only if economic growth and human development can become substantially decoupled from accelerating material use, waste, and emissions can the tensions inherent in the Sustainable Development Goals be resolved and inclusive human development be achieved. In this paper, we summarize the key findings of the assessment study to make the IE research community aware of this new global research resource. The global results show a massive increase in materials extraction from 22 billion tonnes (Bt) in 1970 to 70 Bt in 2010, and an acceleration in material extraction since 2000. This acceleration has occurred at a time when global population growth has slowed and global economic growth has stalled. The global surge in material extraction has been driven by growing wealth and consumption and accelerating trade. A material footprint perspective shows that demand for materials has grown even in the wealthiest parts of the world. Low‐income countries have benefited least from growing global resource availability and have continued to deliver primary materials to high‐income countries while experiencing few improvements in their domestic material living standards. Material efficiency, the amount of primary materials required per unit of economic activity, has declined since around 2000 because of a shift of global production from very material‐efficient economies to less‐efficient ones. This global trend of recoupling economic activity with material use, driven by industrialization and urbanization in the global South, most notably Asia, has negative impacts on a suite of environmental and social issues, including natural resource depletion, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and uneven economic development. This research is a good example of the IE research community providing information for evidence‐based policy making on the global stage and testament to the growing importance of IE research in achieving global sustainable development.
The Global Sociometabolic Transition Krausmann, Fridolin; Fischer-Kowalski, Marina; Schandl, Heinz ...
Journal of industrial ecology,
10/2008, Letnik:
12, Številka:
5-6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Summary
We present the concept of sociometabolic regimes and use it to analyze patterns of change in global social metabolism. Sociometabolic regimes represent dynamic equilibria of society–nature ...interactions and are characterized by typical patterns of material and energy flows (metabolic profiles). From this perspective, industrialization appears as a process of transition from the agrarian to the industrial regime. This article presents a global data set on the socioeconomic metabolism of 175 nations for the year 2000. We group the countries into six clusters differentiated by economic development and population density, reflecting the historical path of (agrarian) development and resource endowment.
Our analysis reveals that per capita material and energy use in industrialized clusters is higher than in developing regions by a factor of 5 to 10. However, per capita use of natural resources differs significantly among industrialized clusters. A large fraction of the global population displays a metabolic profile somewhere in between the patterns typical for the agrarian and the industrial regimes. The sociometabolic transition from an agrarian to an industrial regime is thus an ongoing process with important consequences for future global material and energy demand. If we take a transition between regimes and the current characteristics of this transition as given, the global energy and materials demand is likely to grow by a factor of 2 to 3 during the coming decades. The most critical part of our findings relates to the cluster of high‐density developing countries, as these countries already have a higher anthropogenic material and energy burden per unit of land area than, for example, industrial Europe, with pending further increases bound to surpass carrying capacities.
The Global Sociometabolic Transition Krausmann, Fridolin; Fischer-Kowalski, Marina; Schandl, Heinz ...
Journal of industrial ecology,
10/2008, Letnik:
12, Številka:
5-6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Summary We present the concept of sociometabolic regimes and use it to analyze patterns of change in global social metabolism. Sociometabolic regimes represent dynamic equilibria of society-nature ...interactions and are characterized by typical patterns of material and energy flows (metabolic profiles). From this perspective, industrialization appears as a process of transition from the agrarian to the industrial regime. This article presents a global data set on the socioeconomic metabolism of 175 nations for the year 2000. We group the countries into six clusters differentiated by economic development and population density, reflecting the historical path of (agrarian) development and resource endowment. Our analysis reveals that per capita material and energy use in industrialized clusters is higher than in developing regions by a factor of 5 to 10. However, per capita use of natural resources differs significantly among industrialized clusters. A large fraction of the global population displays a metabolic profile somewhere in between the patterns typical for the agrarian and the industrial regimes. The sociometabolic transition from an agrarian to an industrial regime is thus an ongoing process with important consequences for future global material and energy demand. If we take a transition between regimes and the current characteristics of this transition as given, the global energy and materials demand is likely to grow by a factor of 2 to 3 during the coming decades. The most critical part of our findings relates to the cluster of high-density developing countries, as these countries already have a higher anthropogenic material and energy burden per unit of land area than, for example, industrial Europe, with pending further increases bound to surpass carrying capacities.
The growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change. We present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the ...conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting (MFA). On the grounds of published statistical data, data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources, we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass, fossil energy carriers, metal ores, industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005. This period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth. The paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy, population growth and primary energy consumption. We show that during the last century, global materials use increased 8-fold. Humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons (Gt) of materials per year. In particular, the period after WWII was characterized by rapid physical growth, driven by both population and economic growth. Within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials. Materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy, but faster than world population. As a consequence, material intensity (i.e. the amount of materials required per unit of GDP) declined, while materials use per capita doubled from 4.6 to 10.3 t/cap/yr. The main material groups show different trajectories. While biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth, the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace. We show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use, while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions. So far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development.
Human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP), the aggregate impact of land use on biomass available each year in ecosystems, is a prominent measure of the human domination of the biosphere. ...We present a comprehensive assessment of global HANPP based on vegetation modeling, agricultural and forestry statistics, and geographical information systems data on land use, land cover, and soil degradation that localizes human impact on ecosystems. We found an aggregate global HANPP value of 15.6 Pg C/yr or 23.8% of potential net primary productivity, of which 53% was contributed by harvest, 40% by land-use-induced productivity changes, and 7% by human-induced fires. This is a remarkable impact on the biosphere caused by just one species. We present maps quantifying human-induced changes in trophic energy flows in ecosystems that illustrate spatial patterns in the human domination of ecosystems, thus emphasizing land use as a pervasive factor of global importance. Land use transforms earth's terrestrial surface, resulting in changes in biogeochemical cycles and in the ability of ecosystems to deliver services critical to human well being. The results suggest that large-scale schemes to substitute biomass for fossil fuels should be viewed cautiously because massive additional pressures on ecosystems might result from increased biomass harvest.
Summary
In this article, we inquire into the intellectual history ofthe application of the biological concept of metabolism to social systems‐not as a metaphor; but as a material and energetic ...process within the economy and society vis‐A‐vis various natural systems. The paper reviews several scientific traditions that may contribute to such a view, including biology and ecology, social theory, cultural anthropology, and social geography It assembles widely scattered approaches dating from the 1860s onward and shows how they prepare the ground for the pioneers of “industrial metabolism” in the late 1960s. In connection to varying political perspedives, metabolism gradually takes shape as a powerful interdisciplinary concept It will take another 25 years before this approach becomes one of the most important paradigms for the empirical analysis of the society‐nature‐interaction across various disciplines. This later period will be the subject of part II of this literature review
This article creates a meeting ground between two distinct and fairly elaborate research traditions dealing with social “transitions”: the Dutch societal transitions management approach, and the ...Viennese sociometabolic transitions approach. Sharing a similar understanding of sustainability transitions—namely as major transformational changes of system characteristics—and a background epistemology of complex systems, autopoeisis, and evolutionary mechanisms, they address the subject from different angles: one approach asks how transformative changes happen and what they look like, and the other approach tries answer the question of how to bring them about. The Viennese approach is almost exclusively analytical and deals with a macro (“landscape”) level of human history with a time scale of decades to centuries; the Dutch approach is based on intervention experiences and deals with a shorter time frame (decades) of micro–meso–macro levels of industrial societies. From both their respective angles, they contribute to some of the key questions of sustainability research, namely: how can a transformative change toward sustainability be distinguished from other types of social change? By which mechanisms can obstacles, path dependencies, and adverse interests be overcome? And what are the key persistent problems that call for such a transition?
Five years after its establishment (2016), the LTER-Greece network outlines its vision, aims, objectives and its achievements through a series of case studies. The network consists of eight ...observatories, focusing on innovative research topics, aiming to be both cooperative and complementary, while currently being in the process of expanding. LTER-Greece acknowledges the complexity of ecosystems and the fact that effective management of natural resources may only be achieved by addressing every sector of a nexus system in order to understand inter-dependencies, thus accounting for solutions that promote resilience. Hence, LTER-Greece focuses on the holistic study of the water-environment-ecosystem-food-energy-society nexus, in order to face environmental and socio-ecological challenges at local and global scales, particularly climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, natural disasters and unsustainable water and land management. Framed around five research pillars, monitoring and research targets nine research hypotheses related to climate change, environmental management, socio-ecology and economics, biodiversity and environmental process dynamics. As environmental monitoring and related research and conservation in Greece face critical shortcomings, LTER-Greece envisages confronting these gaps and contributing with interdisciplinary solutions to the current and upcoming complex environmental challenges.
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