Socioeconomic Metabolism Takes the Stage in the International Environmental Policy Debate: A Special Issue to Review Research Progress and Policy Impacts

Abstract

When the editors of this special issue started their scientific careers, they embarked on the analysis of a topic that promised to be policy relevant. Neither industry nor governments, however, shared this view. Though socioeconomic metabolism had a long tradition in interdisciplinary sciences and was a fascinating endeavor, it was not clear whether it would gain currency in policy making or would ever guide business decisions. Perhaps it was a risk to engage in such a topic. Today, socioeconomic metabolism research has gained in prominence in the science and policy communities and has been a "rising conceptual star" (Fischer-Kowalski 1997) in guiding research and policy formulation. This is, in hindsight, no surprise.Global demand for primary materials has grown massively since the 1970s and has been accelerating since the year 2000 at a time when the global economy has faltered and population growth has slowed. Global material use is now, in 2015, reaching 80 billion tonnes per year (Schandl et al. 2015). The global system of production and consumption is geared to a very large and annually growing throughput of biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and construction materials. It shows considerable inertia toward achieving decoupling of economic activity, human well-being, and natural resource use in the short term. The infrastructure that underpins the provision of energy, water, food, housing, and mobility needs to be built up in developing countries and replaced in industrialized countries quickly in order to allow for human well-being while reducing emissions.

A Metric for Quantifying Product‐Level Circularity

“…Of special note is the recent special edition on socioeconomic metabolism in Journal of Industrial Ecology ( JIE ) (Schandl et al. ), which examined various methods for measuring material flows, including material flow analysis (MFA). However, there is no standardized or well‐established method for measuring circularity at the micro level that includes businesses and products (Geng et al.…”

Global Patterns and Trends for Non‐Metallic Minerals used for Construction

“…A more accurate account of nonmetallic minerals is important to strengthen the overall reliability and credibility of global, regional, and national material flow accounts at a time when they have become more politically and economically relevant (Schandl et al. ).…”

Sustainability of the global sand system in the Anthropocene

“…The SSN framework is informed by the theories of socioeconomic metabolism, 16 telecoupled human-natural systems, 17 and complex adaptive systems, 18 which are all rooted in systems theory. 19 The theory of socioeconomic metabolism proposes that, similar to living organisms, society maintains a metabolism through inflows of materials and energy from the environment.…”