Heinz Schandl | CSIRO - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Heinz Schandl
Ecological Economics, 2008
We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the ... more We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization. For two case studies, the United Kingdom and Austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use, land use and labour organization. In a first step, the coal based industrial regime co-existed with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime. In a second step, the oil/electricity based industrial regime, agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio-ecological transition had been completed. Industrialization offers an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale. While today's industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global society are in midst of the old industrial transition. This poses severe problems for global sustainability.
edit.ethz.ch
This paper investigates the energy transition and the relation of energy and economic growth on t... more This paper investigates the energy transition and the relation of energy and economic growth on the basis of a comparable long term historical dataset for four national case studies. It analyses data on the development of energy use and the consumption of energy services during 100 years of industrialization in Austria, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA. All four countries appear as fully industrialized countries today, but were at different stages of industrialization and the energy transition at the beginning of the 20th ...
Ecological Economics, 2002
In this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the cours... more In this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the course of history in terms of society's metabolic interchange with the biophysical environment. Presenting a theoretical model, we begin by focusing on the interface between society and nature (society's natural relations) as conceptualized by the idea of metabolism, which draws upon Marxist theory complemented by a systems approach. The concept of metabolism portrays society as a system, which has to establish and maintain a permanent throughput of energy and matter to produce and maintain society's material components. The amount of resource flow is operationalized by using material and energy flow accounting methods. Empirically, these methods are applied to the UK's economy in a time-series approach from 1850 to the present day. We discuss different aggregates of inputs such as domestic material extraction, foreign trade of materials, energy input and, additionally, give an account of land-use change. Obviously, these changing natural relations are linked to socio-economic activities. Hence, we make a first attempt to discuss different periods of socio-economic development by drawing from a regulation approach and try to link them to physical indicators such as direct material and energy input and domestic material consumption (DMC). Thereby, we hope to contribute to a historical understanding of socio-economically driven environmental change within the framework of ecological economics.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2010
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2009
In this article we test the long-term dematerialization potential for Australia in terms of mater... more In this article we test the long-term dematerialization potential for Australia in terms of materials, energy, and water use as well as CO2 emissions by introducing concrete targets for major sectors. Major improvements in the construction and housing, transport and mobility, and food and nutrition sectors in the Australian economy, if coupled with significant reductions in the resource export sectors, would substantially improve the current material, energy, and emission intensive pattern of Australia's production and consumption system. Using the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework we model all system interactions to understand the contributions of large-scale changes in technology, infrastructure, and lifestyle to decoupling the economy from the environment. The modeling shows a considerable reduction in natural resource use, while energy and water use decrease to a much lesser extent because a reduction in natural resource consumption creates a trade-off in energy use. It also shows that trade and economic growth may continue, but at a reduced rate compared with a business-as-usual scenario. The findings of our modeling are discussed in light of the large body of literature on dematerialization, eco-efficiency, and rebound effects that may occur when efficiency is increased. We argue that Australia cannot rely on incremental efficiency gains but has to undergo a sustainability transition to achieve a low carbon future to keep in line with the international effort to avoid climate change and resource use conflicts. We touch upon the institutional changes that would be required to guide a sustainability transition in the Australian economy, such as an emission trading scheme.
Population and Environment, 2001
From a material and energetic perspective, this paper outlines the patterns of society-nature int... more From a material and energetic perspective, this paper outlines the patterns of society-nature interactions of a local horticultural, hunter-and-gatherer population that lives on a remote island between India and Indonesia. Based on empirical research, we present several indicators to show an economic portfolio of a local society that combines horticulture, hunting and gathering activities with elements of industrialisation and market economy. In describing these environmental relations, the study narrows its focus to the use of three socio-ecological concepts, namely socio-economic metabolism, colonising natural processes, and the energetic return on investment. Using these concepts, we show the dynamics of social and environmental transformation at a local level and the consequences this may have for sustainability.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2011
This contribution presents the state of the art of economy-wide material flow accounting. Startin... more This contribution presents the state of the art of economy-wide material flow accounting. Starting from a brief recollection of the intellectual and policy history of this approach, we outline system definition, key methodological assumptions, and derived indicators. The next section makes an effort to establish data reliability and uncertainty for a number of existing multinational (European and global) material flow accounting (MFA) data compilations and discusses sources of inconsistencies and variations for some indicators and trends. The results show that the methodology has reached a certain maturity: Coefficients of variation between databases lie in the range of 10% to 20%, and correlations between databases across countries amount to an average R2 of 0.95. After discussing some of the research frontiers for further methodological development, we conclude that the material flow accounting framework and the data generated have reached a maturity that warrants material flow indicators to complement traditional economic and demographic information in providing a sound basis for discussing national and international policies for sustainable resource use.
Human Ecology, 2003
Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and globa... more Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and global environmental change requires an understanding of how societies cope with their natural environment. Indicators for society–nature interactions are fairly well developed for national-level analyses. This study adapts some of these indicators to the local level and relates them to a qualitative assessment of economic and cultural change in a single community. Indicators are derived from material and energy flow accounting methods and address two major objectives: Firstly, to identify mutual influences between the global and the local level. Secondly, to assess future potentials of environmental pressures and impacts that can be expected to occur as such communities follow a path of further modernization. This study of a small rice-farming community in Northeast Thailand deals with physical as well as sociocultural aspects in order to produce a broad picture of society–nature relations. The indicators developed portray a society in the midst of transition and rapid modernization. This becomes apparent when comparing the results to those of similar studies in traditional and industrial societies. What we see is a community struggling to adapt to global influences, while at the same time maintaining subsistence with traditional coping mechanisms.
Ecological Economics, 2008
We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the ... more We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization. For two case studies, the United Kingdom and Austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use, land use and labour organization. In a first step, the coal based industrial regime coexisted with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime. In a second step, the oil/electricity based industrial regime, agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio-ecological transition had been completed. Industrialization offers an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale. While today's industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global society are in midst of the old industrial transition. This poses severe problems for global sustainability. ava i l a b l e a t w w w. s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 6 5 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 1 8 7 -2 0 1
Environmental Management and Health, 1999
Current attempts to develop comprehensive systems of sustainability indicators based upon the usu... more Current attempts to develop comprehensive systems of sustainability indicators based upon the usual "pressure-state-response" (PSR) framework failed to yield convincing results, mainly due to the narrow focus of PSR on traditional environmental policy. We here propose an extended system of sustainability indicators containing four types of indicators: (1) Socio-economic driving forces,
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
It is not surprising that natural resource use is now on the political agenda, and heatedly
Innovation-the European Journal of Social Science Research, 1999
National material flow analyses and materials balances are indispensable sources of information w... more National material flow analyses and materials balances are indispensable sources of information with respect to the operationalizalion of sustainable development. Both of these instruments are already employed in official statistics in Germany and Japan, and other countries—especially member slates of the European Union—are likely to follow suit. Because of the preparatory stages of work that have already been carried out, Austria is in an excellent position to assume a leading role in international concerted action. From 1970 to 1990 total materials flow through Austrian society has approximately increased by one third. As can be seen from changes in the amount of primary energy used during this period, economic growth in physical terms and value added in production decoupled slightly, and the same is true for the use of materials. Since 1970, materials input per unit of GDP (material intensity) decreased by 25%. This implies that relative gains in efficiency are compensated by the annual increases in the use of materials which, by and large, are caused by few yet massive ‘strategic’ material flows of steel, cement, wood, paper/pulp, sand, gravel and crushed stone. The empirical findings suggest that delinking of economic growth from the metabolism of human society should be discussed more carefully. The concept of ‘delinking’ involves two alternative perspectives of development differing from each other with respect to their ecological effects. The analysis may either focus upon absolute changes in materials throughput or on the relative changes of materials throughput per unit of output. It is strongly recommended, therefore, to distinguish clearly between relative and absolute productivity of resources. Branch analyses confirmed, once again, that the information contained in material indicators related to value‐added concepts is relatively insignificant when it comes to evaluation of the social ‘pressures upon the environment’.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
This article presents an account of global resource extraction for the year 1999 by material grou... more This article presents an account of global resource extraction for the year 1999 by material groups, world regions, and development status. The account is based on materials flow analysis methodology and provides benchmark information for political strategies toward sustainable resource management. It shows that currently around 50 thousand megatons of resources are extracted yearly on a global scale, which results in a yearly global average resource use of around 8 tonnes per capita. Assuming further growth in world regions not yet close to the levels of resource use in the industrial cores—such as India or China—numbers could easily double once these parts of the world come to fully incorporate the industrial mode of production and consumption. This article contributes to information on resource use indicators, complementing and enriching information from economic accounting in order to facilitate political measures toward a sustainable use of resources.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
Australia's export oriented large natural resources sectors of agriculture and mining, the ways i... more Australia's export oriented large natural resources sectors of agriculture and mining, the ways in which large scale services such as nutrition, water, housing, transport and mobility, and energy are organized, as well as the consumption patterns of Australia's wealthy urban households, create a unique pattern of overall resource use in Australia. In an attempt to contribute to a new environmental information system compatible with economic accounts, we represent Australia's resource use by employing standard biophysical indicators for resource use developed within the OECD context. We are looking at the last three decades of resource use and the economic, social and environmental implications. We also discuss scenarios of future resource use patterns based on a stocks and flows model of the Australian economy. We argue that current extractive economic patterns have contributed to the recent economic boom in Australia but will eventually lead to negative social and environmental outcomes. While there is currently little evidence of political support for changing the economic focus on export-oriented agriculture and mining industries, there is significant potential for improvements in socio-technological systems, and room for more sustainable household consumption.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2009
A possible sustainability transition in developing Asia needs to complement the ongoing transitio... more A possible sustainability transition in developing Asia needs to complement the ongoing transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime. As is known from other world regions, an agrarian-industrial transition involves a major increase in material and energy flows (corresponding to a 2-4 fold increase in the demand for raw materials and energy). The socio-metabolic profile of the South-East Asian region still shows relatively low material and energy consumption per capita, suggesting that major growth may follow. Infrastructures that are closely bound-up in bulk material flows (transport, energy and food sectors) will be critical to future developments. The paper illustrates the challenge and potential solutions from a number of case studies.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
We present the concept of sociometabolic regimes and use it to analyze patterns of change in glob... more 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.
Ecological Economics, 2008
Our aim is to explain historical economic growth in the UK economy by introducing an empirical me... more Our aim is to explain historical economic growth in the UK economy by introducing an empirical measure for useful work derived from natural resource energy inputs into an augmented production function. To do this, we estimate the long-term trends in resource exergy supply and conversion to useful work in the United Kingdom. The exergy resources considered included domestic consumption of coal, crude oil and petroleum products, natural gas, nuclear and renewable resources (including biomass). All flows of exergy were allocated to an end use such as providing heat, light, transport, human and animal work and electrical power. For each end-use we estimated a time dependent efficiency of conversion from exergy to useful work. The 3-factor production function (of capital, labour and useful work) is able to reproduce the historic trajectory of economic growth without recourse to any exogenous assumptions of technological progress or total factor productivity. The results indicate that useful work derived from natural resource exergy is an important factor of production.
Ecological Economics, 2008
We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the ... more We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization. For two case studies, the United Kingdom and Austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use, land use and labour organization. In a first step, the coal based industrial regime co-existed with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime. In a second step, the oil/electricity based industrial regime, agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio-ecological transition had been completed. Industrialization offers an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale. While today's industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global society are in midst of the old industrial transition. This poses severe problems for global sustainability.
edit.ethz.ch
This paper investigates the energy transition and the relation of energy and economic growth on t... more This paper investigates the energy transition and the relation of energy and economic growth on the basis of a comparable long term historical dataset for four national case studies. It analyses data on the development of energy use and the consumption of energy services during 100 years of industrialization in Austria, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA. All four countries appear as fully industrialized countries today, but were at different stages of industrialization and the energy transition at the beginning of the 20th ...
Ecological Economics, 2002
In this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the cours... more In this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the course of history in terms of society's metabolic interchange with the biophysical environment. Presenting a theoretical model, we begin by focusing on the interface between society and nature (society's natural relations) as conceptualized by the idea of metabolism, which draws upon Marxist theory complemented by a systems approach. The concept of metabolism portrays society as a system, which has to establish and maintain a permanent throughput of energy and matter to produce and maintain society's material components. The amount of resource flow is operationalized by using material and energy flow accounting methods. Empirically, these methods are applied to the UK's economy in a time-series approach from 1850 to the present day. We discuss different aggregates of inputs such as domestic material extraction, foreign trade of materials, energy input and, additionally, give an account of land-use change. Obviously, these changing natural relations are linked to socio-economic activities. Hence, we make a first attempt to discuss different periods of socio-economic development by drawing from a regulation approach and try to link them to physical indicators such as direct material and energy input and domestic material consumption (DMC). Thereby, we hope to contribute to a historical understanding of socio-economically driven environmental change within the framework of ecological economics.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2010
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2009
In this article we test the long-term dematerialization potential for Australia in terms of mater... more In this article we test the long-term dematerialization potential for Australia in terms of materials, energy, and water use as well as CO2 emissions by introducing concrete targets for major sectors. Major improvements in the construction and housing, transport and mobility, and food and nutrition sectors in the Australian economy, if coupled with significant reductions in the resource export sectors, would substantially improve the current material, energy, and emission intensive pattern of Australia's production and consumption system. Using the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework we model all system interactions to understand the contributions of large-scale changes in technology, infrastructure, and lifestyle to decoupling the economy from the environment. The modeling shows a considerable reduction in natural resource use, while energy and water use decrease to a much lesser extent because a reduction in natural resource consumption creates a trade-off in energy use. It also shows that trade and economic growth may continue, but at a reduced rate compared with a business-as-usual scenario. The findings of our modeling are discussed in light of the large body of literature on dematerialization, eco-efficiency, and rebound effects that may occur when efficiency is increased. We argue that Australia cannot rely on incremental efficiency gains but has to undergo a sustainability transition to achieve a low carbon future to keep in line with the international effort to avoid climate change and resource use conflicts. We touch upon the institutional changes that would be required to guide a sustainability transition in the Australian economy, such as an emission trading scheme.
Population and Environment, 2001
From a material and energetic perspective, this paper outlines the patterns of society-nature int... more From a material and energetic perspective, this paper outlines the patterns of society-nature interactions of a local horticultural, hunter-and-gatherer population that lives on a remote island between India and Indonesia. Based on empirical research, we present several indicators to show an economic portfolio of a local society that combines horticulture, hunting and gathering activities with elements of industrialisation and market economy. In describing these environmental relations, the study narrows its focus to the use of three socio-ecological concepts, namely socio-economic metabolism, colonising natural processes, and the energetic return on investment. Using these concepts, we show the dynamics of social and environmental transformation at a local level and the consequences this may have for sustainability.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2011
This contribution presents the state of the art of economy-wide material flow accounting. Startin... more This contribution presents the state of the art of economy-wide material flow accounting. Starting from a brief recollection of the intellectual and policy history of this approach, we outline system definition, key methodological assumptions, and derived indicators. The next section makes an effort to establish data reliability and uncertainty for a number of existing multinational (European and global) material flow accounting (MFA) data compilations and discusses sources of inconsistencies and variations for some indicators and trends. The results show that the methodology has reached a certain maturity: Coefficients of variation between databases lie in the range of 10% to 20%, and correlations between databases across countries amount to an average R2 of 0.95. After discussing some of the research frontiers for further methodological development, we conclude that the material flow accounting framework and the data generated have reached a maturity that warrants material flow indicators to complement traditional economic and demographic information in providing a sound basis for discussing national and international policies for sustainable resource use.
Human Ecology, 2003
Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and globa... more Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and global environmental change requires an understanding of how societies cope with their natural environment. Indicators for society–nature interactions are fairly well developed for national-level analyses. This study adapts some of these indicators to the local level and relates them to a qualitative assessment of economic and cultural change in a single community. Indicators are derived from material and energy flow accounting methods and address two major objectives: Firstly, to identify mutual influences between the global and the local level. Secondly, to assess future potentials of environmental pressures and impacts that can be expected to occur as such communities follow a path of further modernization. This study of a small rice-farming community in Northeast Thailand deals with physical as well as sociocultural aspects in order to produce a broad picture of society–nature relations. The indicators developed portray a society in the midst of transition and rapid modernization. This becomes apparent when comparing the results to those of similar studies in traditional and industrial societies. What we see is a community struggling to adapt to global influences, while at the same time maintaining subsistence with traditional coping mechanisms.
Ecological Economics, 2008
We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the ... more We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization. For two case studies, the United Kingdom and Austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use, land use and labour organization. In a first step, the coal based industrial regime coexisted with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime. In a second step, the oil/electricity based industrial regime, agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio-ecological transition had been completed. Industrialization offers an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale. While today's industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global society are in midst of the old industrial transition. This poses severe problems for global sustainability. ava i l a b l e a t w w w. s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 6 5 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 1 8 7 -2 0 1
Environmental Management and Health, 1999
Current attempts to develop comprehensive systems of sustainability indicators based upon the usu... more Current attempts to develop comprehensive systems of sustainability indicators based upon the usual "pressure-state-response" (PSR) framework failed to yield convincing results, mainly due to the narrow focus of PSR on traditional environmental policy. We here propose an extended system of sustainability indicators containing four types of indicators: (1) Socio-economic driving forces,
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
It is not surprising that natural resource use is now on the political agenda, and heatedly
Innovation-the European Journal of Social Science Research, 1999
National material flow analyses and materials balances are indispensable sources of information w... more National material flow analyses and materials balances are indispensable sources of information with respect to the operationalizalion of sustainable development. Both of these instruments are already employed in official statistics in Germany and Japan, and other countries—especially member slates of the European Union—are likely to follow suit. Because of the preparatory stages of work that have already been carried out, Austria is in an excellent position to assume a leading role in international concerted action. From 1970 to 1990 total materials flow through Austrian society has approximately increased by one third. As can be seen from changes in the amount of primary energy used during this period, economic growth in physical terms and value added in production decoupled slightly, and the same is true for the use of materials. Since 1970, materials input per unit of GDP (material intensity) decreased by 25%. This implies that relative gains in efficiency are compensated by the annual increases in the use of materials which, by and large, are caused by few yet massive ‘strategic’ material flows of steel, cement, wood, paper/pulp, sand, gravel and crushed stone. The empirical findings suggest that delinking of economic growth from the metabolism of human society should be discussed more carefully. The concept of ‘delinking’ involves two alternative perspectives of development differing from each other with respect to their ecological effects. The analysis may either focus upon absolute changes in materials throughput or on the relative changes of materials throughput per unit of output. It is strongly recommended, therefore, to distinguish clearly between relative and absolute productivity of resources. Branch analyses confirmed, once again, that the information contained in material indicators related to value‐added concepts is relatively insignificant when it comes to evaluation of the social ‘pressures upon the environment’.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
This article presents an account of global resource extraction for the year 1999 by material grou... more This article presents an account of global resource extraction for the year 1999 by material groups, world regions, and development status. The account is based on materials flow analysis methodology and provides benchmark information for political strategies toward sustainable resource management. It shows that currently around 50 thousand megatons of resources are extracted yearly on a global scale, which results in a yearly global average resource use of around 8 tonnes per capita. Assuming further growth in world regions not yet close to the levels of resource use in the industrial cores—such as India or China—numbers could easily double once these parts of the world come to fully incorporate the industrial mode of production and consumption. This article contributes to information on resource use indicators, complementing and enriching information from economic accounting in order to facilitate political measures toward a sustainable use of resources.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
Australia's export oriented large natural resources sectors of agriculture and mining, the ways i... more Australia's export oriented large natural resources sectors of agriculture and mining, the ways in which large scale services such as nutrition, water, housing, transport and mobility, and energy are organized, as well as the consumption patterns of Australia's wealthy urban households, create a unique pattern of overall resource use in Australia. In an attempt to contribute to a new environmental information system compatible with economic accounts, we represent Australia's resource use by employing standard biophysical indicators for resource use developed within the OECD context. We are looking at the last three decades of resource use and the economic, social and environmental implications. We also discuss scenarios of future resource use patterns based on a stocks and flows model of the Australian economy. We argue that current extractive economic patterns have contributed to the recent economic boom in Australia but will eventually lead to negative social and environmental outcomes. While there is currently little evidence of political support for changing the economic focus on export-oriented agriculture and mining industries, there is significant potential for improvements in socio-technological systems, and room for more sustainable household consumption.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2009
A possible sustainability transition in developing Asia needs to complement the ongoing transitio... more A possible sustainability transition in developing Asia needs to complement the ongoing transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime. As is known from other world regions, an agrarian-industrial transition involves a major increase in material and energy flows (corresponding to a 2-4 fold increase in the demand for raw materials and energy). The socio-metabolic profile of the South-East Asian region still shows relatively low material and energy consumption per capita, suggesting that major growth may follow. Infrastructures that are closely bound-up in bulk material flows (transport, energy and food sectors) will be critical to future developments. The paper illustrates the challenge and potential solutions from a number of case studies.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008
We present the concept of sociometabolic regimes and use it to analyze patterns of change in glob... more 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.
Ecological Economics, 2008
Our aim is to explain historical economic growth in the UK economy by introducing an empirical me... more Our aim is to explain historical economic growth in the UK economy by introducing an empirical measure for useful work derived from natural resource energy inputs into an augmented production function. To do this, we estimate the long-term trends in resource exergy supply and conversion to useful work in the United Kingdom. The exergy resources considered included domestic consumption of coal, crude oil and petroleum products, natural gas, nuclear and renewable resources (including biomass). All flows of exergy were allocated to an end use such as providing heat, light, transport, human and animal work and electrical power. For each end-use we estimated a time dependent efficiency of conversion from exergy to useful work. The 3-factor production function (of capital, labour and useful work) is able to reproduce the historic trajectory of economic growth without recourse to any exogenous assumptions of technological progress or total factor productivity. The results indicate that useful work derived from natural resource exergy is an important factor of production.