The Hijacking of the Bioeconomy Vivien, F.-D.; Nieddu, M.; Befort, N. ...
Ecological economics,
05/2019, Letnik:
159
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Georgescu-Roegen used the term bioeconomy to refer to a radical ecological perspective on economics he developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years, it has also become a buzzword used by public ...institutions to announce and describe a supposed current economic and ecological transition. We see in this use an attempt of semantic hijacking of the original term. To support this claim we analyze three different interpretations of the term bioeconomy, presenting each of them as narratives combining distinct visions of future economic development, technical trajectories and imaginaries associated with a particular relationship to nature. Finally, we discuss these narratives in relation to the endorsement they receive by different stakeholders.
•Reviews the bioeconomy as defined by N. Georgescu-Roegen in order to discuss the development of the bioeconomy.•Adopts a narrative-based approach in order to identify main narratives as ideal-types.•Compares three main narratives of the bioeconomy: sustainability-oriented, science-oriented, and biomass-oriented.•Science and biomass-oriented narratives are dominating and trying to hijack Georgescu-Roegen’ bioeconomy.
Post-industrial societies heavily rely on the consumption of embodied energy for their activities – i.e., energy invested elsewhere to produce what is imported and consumed (or re-exported). The ...openness of the energy sector poses modelling challenges, calling for multi-scale, integrated analytical frames. We propose a methodology grounded in societal metabolism aimed at analysing the behaviour of a system (where the system may be a region, a country, a continent, etc.). We make the distinction between three types of scales necessary to contextualize the behaviour of the energy sector within a globalized economy: the macroscope, the mesoscope and the microscope. The methodology is applied to analyze the energy sector of EU19 countries, considering internal and external labour, primary energy sources, energy carriers and GHG emissions. The results show that imported primary energy sources and energy carriers within the EU19 are associated with externalized pressures and impacts. For example, accounting for the externalized carbon emissions of the energy sector raises total GHG emissions of the sector by 60% on EU average. This has implications for the assessment of the effectiveness of global sustainability policies. By not accounting for externalized effects, energy models can miss relevant information about the interactions among systems.
•Post-industrial societies heavily rely on the consumption of embodied energy.•Not accounting for externalized effects might be misleading for decision-making.•Three scales of analysis are proposed: macroscope, mesoscope and microscope.•We applied the proposed methodology to the analysis of the EU19’s energy sector.
Biofuels represent a complex issue in the sustainability discourse as they require the simultaneous consideration of different dimensions and scales of analysis. This situation explains the ...co-existence of contrasting ‘scientific evidence’ about their performance. This paper presents a novel conceptual framework that integrates four key aspects of the performance of biofuels: (1) the social factors determining the desirability of biofuel use on the demand side – why do we want to produce biofuels?; (2) the internal technical and economic constraints affecting the viability of their mode of production on the supply side – how can we produce biofuels?; (3) the external biophysical constraints limiting the feasibility of their production – what are the material limits imposed by the availability of natural resources?; (4) the level of openness of the biofuel system referring to the imports used to overcome local limits – the level of externalization of the requirement of natural resources and technical production factors reducing energy security. The proposed framework generates a biophysical characterization of the supply function of a biofuel system (which inputs are needed to generate the supply) contextualized against a biophysical characterization of the societal demand (what inputs the society is ready to invest in the energy system in order to obtain the supply).
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•Different non-equivalent framings generate a systemic confusion on biofuels.•A conceptual framework grounded in energetics and relational analysis is proposed.•The framework allows to assess feasibility, viability, desirability, openness.
There is increasing recognition of the wicked nature of the intertwined climate, biodiversity and economic crises, and the need for adaptive, multi-scale approaches to understanding the complexity of ...both the problems and potential responses. Most science underpinning policy responses to sustainability issues, however, remains overtly apolitical and focussed on technical innovation; at odds with a critical body of literatures insisting on the recognition of systemic problem framing when supporting policy processes. This paper documents the experience of implementing a mixed method approach called quantitative story-telling (QST) to policy analysis that explicitly recognises this normative dimension, as the methodology is part of a post-normal science (PNS) toolkit. The authors reflect on what was learnt when considering how QST fared as a tool for science–policy interaction, working with European Union (EU) level policy actors interested in sustainable agriculture and sustainable development goal 2. These goals—also known as UN Agenda 2030—are the latest institutionalisation of the pursuit of sustainable development and the EU has positioned itself as taking a lead in its implementation. Thus, the paper illustrates our experience of using PNS as an approach to science policy interfaces in a strategic policy context; and illustrates how the challenges identified in the science–policy literature are amplified when working across multiple policy domains and taking a complex systems approach. Our discussion on lessons learnt may be of interest to researchers seeking to work with policy-makers on complex sustainability issues.
This exploratory study investigates the relationship between morning and evening types and creative thinking as defined by Guilford’s factorial hypothesis. The research was carried out on a sample of ...120 subjects, 52 males and 68 females aged between 19 and 76. The data show that evening-disposition is correlated with the ability to apply divergent thinking strategies to visual content. There was no significant difference between men and women but many differences were found with respect to age group. These findings suggest the need for in-depth studies to investigate morning and evening types and their relationship with creative thinking.
The Myth of Resource Efficiency Polimeni, John M.; Mayumi, Kozo; Giampietro, Mario ...
2008, 20151208, 2009, 2015-12-08, 20090101
eBook
'The Jevons Paradox', which was first expressed in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons in relation to use of coal, states that an increase in efficiency in using a resource leads to increased use of that ...resource rather than to a reduction. This has subsequently been proved to apply not just to fossil fuels, but other resource use scenarios. For example, doubling the efficiency of food production per hectare over the last 50 years (due to the Green Revolution) did not solve the problem of hunger. The increase in efficiency increased production and worsened hunger because of the resulting increase in population. The implications of this in today's world are substantial. Many scientists and policymakers argue that future technological innovations will reduce consumption of resources; the Jevons Paradox explains why this may be a false hope.
This is the first book to provide a historical overview of the Jevons Paradox, provide evidence for its existence and apply it to complex systems. Written and edited by world experts in the fields of economics, ecological economics, technology and the environment, it explains the myth of efficiency and explores its implications for resource usage (particularly oil). It is a must-read for policymakers, natural resource managers, academics and students concerned with the effects of efficiency on resource use.
•A causal characterization between nexus problems and multi-level, conflictive goals.•Conceptualization of nexus networks through the lens of relational analysis.•Formalization of nexus networks with ...metabolic processors and a taxonomy of relations.•An illustration of a water-food nexus network with interconnected causal mechanisms for groundwater over-draft.•A range of social-ecological patterns demanding different adaptation strategies.
While a large number of descriptive studies have delineated the interlinkages between water, food and energy resources in the last decade, there is still need for systematic conceptualization of resource nexus interconnections. This paper proposes a theory of relational analysis of the nexus based on the analytical concept of nexus networks. A taxonomy of nexus interconnections, detailing sequential and hierarchical connections, is characterized between and amongst the technosphere and biosphere. We illustrate the use of a novel diagnostic tool with regard to its ability to integrate macro-, meso- and microscale drivers of nexus problems. We apply this framework to problems generated by intensive crop production for exportation in an arid landscape (driven by external markets) and sustainable management of water resources (driven by public policies) in a southern Spanish region. We elucidate interconnected causal mechanisms for groundwater overexploitation and profile different social-ecological patterns on a spatially-explicit basis. The proposed approach is capable of accounting for the water-energy-food resource nexus in an integrated and multi-level fashion, addressing the tensions generated by both multi-functionality and resource entanglement in complex social-ecological systems.
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Biofuels are widely seen as a feasible alternative to oil. Indeed, in 1995 the Clinton Administration proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act that would require gasoline sold in the nine most ...polluted US cities to contain additives from renewable sources, such as grain alcohol. This move, even if blocked by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, has helped to focus attention on the question of whether research and development in biofuel production from agricultural crops should be increased. In Europe, similar fiscal and regulatory provisions have already been introduced. These policies assume that biofuels have the potential to reduce current dependence of industrialized societies on rapidly disappearing fossil energy stocks and that biofuels are desirable from an ecological point of view. But are these assumptions correct? Although abundant scientific literature is available on various biofuel production techniques, attempts to provide a comprehensive evaluation of large-scale biofuel production as an alternative to fossil energy depletion are few and controversial. The complexity of the assessments involved and ideological biases in the research of both opponents and proponents of biofuel production make it difficult to weigh the contrasting information found in the literature. Moreover, the validity of extrapolating results obtained at the level of the individual biofuel plant or farm to entire societies or ecosystems has rarely been explicitly addressed in the literature. In this article, we attempt to provide such a comprehensive assessment of the feasibility of large-scale biofuel production by critically reviewing the existing biofuel literature from a broad perspective.
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