Exploring the potentialities of emergy accounting in studying the limits to growth of urban systems

Agostinho, Feni; Sevegnani, Fábio; Almeida, C.M.V.B.; Giannetti, Biagio F.

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.05.007

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The UEV used for labor and services was the EMR (sej/GDP) most recent available value calculated for Brazil (see Appendix A). Additionally, the partial renewability values for each resource input were considered, when available, as proposed by Agostinho et al [22]. The sum of the emergy flows in solar emjoules (sej) results on the total emergy demanded (Y).…”

Section: Emergy Synthesis Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Accounting of the Yellow-Tail Lambari Aquaculture: Sustainability of Rural Freshwater Pond Systems

et al. 2022

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Freshwater pond aquaculture is the prevailing fish culture system worldwide, especially in developing countries. The sustainability of such systems has not been assessed and it can be improved based on suitable scientific analyses. In the present study, we apply the emergy synthesis to assess the sustainability of lambari aquaculture, used as a model of freshwater pond monoculture in Brazil, to identify the key practices, and to propose changes to improve them towards sustainability. As a study model, nine semi-intensive lambari farms operating at three levels of management were evaluated: low (LC), moderate (MC) and high (HC) control. Results showed that the main inputs for LC were services (27–46%), feed (7–39%) and water (15–21%), while for the MC and HC farms, they were feed (35–49% and 17–48%, respectively) and services (33–39% and 26–36%, respectively). All farms required more than 60% of their emergy from purchased inputs, resulting in low emergy sustainability index (ESI = 0.1–0.5). Increasing juvenile productivity, using superficial water instead of springwater, controlling pond fertilization and replacing animal protein in diet composition by vegetable sources can lead systems to higher efficiency and resilience, increasing sustainability.

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Section: Emergy Synthesis Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Accounting of the Yellow-Tail Lambari Aquaculture: Sustainability of Rural Freshwater Pond Systems

et al. 2022

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“…Through this approach, the evolution of a complex system can be analyzed, and the leverage points of the system (Meadows, 1999) identified, i.e., those stocks, flows, or processes where even a small change of some parameter may give rise to a general systemic re-configuration. Emergy and its systems thinking bases represent frontier approaches to geobiophysically and transdisciplinarily investigate urban metabolism and its sustainability, yet it is already supported by some key literature (Agostinho et al, 2018;Viglia et al, 2018;.…”

Section: Materials and Emergy Flows Accountingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies of socio-ecological transition for a sustainable urban metabolism

Padovan

Cristiano

Gonella

2022

Front. Sustain. Cities

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Urbanization plays a key role in the human activities causing and feeding climate change. At present, climate change and other environmental issues are directly or indirectly related to the metabolism of cities. However, cities may also play a central role in the fight against climate change. This is the reason why Urban Metabolism (UM) has become a powerful concept to account for and understand the way in which complex systems such as cities use and dispose of material resources, also suggesting measures to change their operational regimes. The rightsizing and optimization of UM is basically a matter of social innovation. It implies changes in the way a city collectively produces and reproduces its physical stocks and provides services to its inhabitants. This article aims at identifying strategies, scenarios, and pathways to slow down urban metabolic processes while improving their efficiency, thus managing a successful transition to an urban (more) circular economy, as well as decreasing the material intensity of the urban economy. The main objectives of the article are the following:1. The development of a renewed approach for studying Urban Metabolism based on transdisciplinary approaches and methods aimed to model metabolic agents' patterns of practices.2. The definition of urban patterns of resource use of different agents shaping urban metabolism (households, corporate agents, communities, and public authorities).3. The exploration of the main policies and administrative tools that cities use to manage environmental problems leading to different urban regulation regimes.4. A tool for generating future scenarios and roadmaps to reach a low-carbon future. This tool is crucial for engaging experts, stakeholders and the public looking for new solutions.

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“…The analysis of the city dynamics then proceeds by setting up a system of non-linear relations, determined by the operational feedback network. Further recent works reporting systemic analyses applied to city sustainability are from Viglia et al (2016), Agostinho et al (2018), Marvuglia et al (2018), Lee and Braham (2019), Braham et al (2019) and Ulgiati and Zucaro (2019), who also link emergy analysis to a circular economy, which is one of the hot topics in the context of urban planning. In particular, Ulgiati and Zucaro explicitly use the notion of urban metabolism (Céspedes Restrepo and Morales-Pinzón, 2018), and for all internal city processes they use a biology-based narrative for the exchange of matter and energy between the living organisms and the environment.…”

Section: The Systemic Smart Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Smart Narrative of a Smart City

Gonella

2019

Front. Sustain. Cities

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The current narrative about Smart Cities is flawed on two levels. First, it describes cities whose promise of smartness is highly biased. Second, it neglects to account for the systemic nature of the urban metabolism, as well as the role of the support region of the city (in terms of its resource provision). In this contribution, I propose a short review of the mainstream Smart City narrative elements as presented by influential and authoritative sources, pointing out their detachment from the reality and from the sustainability of cities described by systemic thinking.

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Exploring the potentialities of emergy accounting in studying the limits to growth of urban systems

Cited by 17 publications

References 24 publications

Environmental Accounting of the Yellow-Tail Lambari Aquaculture: Sustainability of Rural Freshwater Pond Systems

Environmental Accounting of the Yellow-Tail Lambari Aquaculture: Sustainability of Rural Freshwater Pond Systems

Strategies of socio-ecological transition for a sustainable urban metabolism

The Smart Narrative of a Smart City

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