The sustainability of
Local Rural Systems
Willi Haas
Simron Jit Singh
SS 2014
Watch out! The students who analyse
local rural systems are coming!
 This seminar collaborates with 1) the University
of South Bohemia in České Budějovice (1-2
tutors and 3 students) and with 2) Masaryk
University in Brno (1 tutor and 5 students). Both
will also help us as translators in the field.
A round of introduction
(name, study programme,
motivation for this seminar)
Please fill up the excel sheet
with your details, as well as
on the printed form!
The environmental problems (some
would say crisis) we face today are a
consequence of the ways global
society interacts with nature
1. Conceptualising
society-nature interactions
(social metabolism)
“Society as hybrid between material
and symbolic worlds”
Conceptualizing society-nature interactions
Fischer-Kowalski & Weisz, 1999
naturalsphereofcausation
culturalsphereofcausation
Human population & their biophysical stocks
Metabolism/
colonization
naturalsphereofcausation
culturalsphereofcausation
Conceptualizing society-nature interactions
Fischer-Kowalski & Weisz, 1999
Material, energy, land, time analysis
Human population & their biophysical stocks
“Society’s metabolism” means…
…that societies organize (similar to organisms) material
and energy flows with their natural environment;
…they extract primary resources and use them for food,
machines, buildings, infrastructure, heating and many
other products and finally return them, with more or less
delay, in the form of wastes and emissions to their
environments.
naturalsphereofcausation
culturalsphereofcausation
Experience &
meaning
Decisions &
expectations
communication
Conceptualizing society-nature interactions
Fischer-Kowalski & Weisz, 1999
Institutional analysisMaterial, energy, land, time analysis
Human
population &
their
biophysical
stocks
Metabolism/
colonization
Operationalizing Social Metabolism:
Material & Energy Flow Accounting (MEFA)
Stocks
Economic
Processing
DE
DPO
Imports Exports
Immigrants Emigrants
Air,
Water
Water
Vapour
Domestic environment
For national level studies, standard accounting guidelines
and recommended databases exist for most countries
DMC,
DE,
Im / Ex,
MI / MP
PTB,
RME, etc.
Why analyse material and energy flows?
• Materials and energy are biophysical categories necessary for human
survival and reproduction
• They are finite both in terms of availability and productivity (source
function of nature)
• Patterns of material and energy use (in both quantitative and qualitative
terms) affect the future survival of humans and other species (sink
function of nature – living space)
• The world is presently experiencing an unprecedented environment crisis
due to the ways we consume our resources (materials, energy, land)
causing sustainability problems on the input side (scarcity) and the output
side (pollution)
• This has also had social consequences in terms of resource distributional
conflicts and environmental justice
Source: Rockström et al. 2009
Beyond the
boundary
The inner green shading
represents the proposed
safe operating space for
nine planetary systems.
The red wedges represent
an estimate of the current
position for each variable.
The boundaries in three
systems (rate of
biodiversity loss, climate
change and human
interference with the
nitrogen cycle), have
already been exceeded.
Source: Rockström et al.
2009: p.472
Material and Energy Flow Analysis - MEFA
MEFA is a method that allows to:
- Analyze the quantity and quality of resources extracted from
nature and their passing through processing, transport, final
consumption and disposal
- Analyze the spatial dimension of material flows (where extraction,
production, consumption and disposal takes place)
- Interpret the impact of these flows within sustainability sciences,
ecological economics, industrial ecology and social ecology
- Relate these flows to development concerns (ecological unequal
exchange, uneven development, distributional conflicts,
embedded power relations (political ecology)
Raw material --> semi-/products --> use disposal
Value
added
Mass
Developed countriesdeveloping
Monetaryvalue
100%
0%
Problem shifting via international division of labor
Unequal exchange; Environmental justice
The quantity and quality of
material and energy throughput
is influenced by…
(1) The size of human and livestock population, and
man-made artifacts that need to be reproduced
(2) The productive / exploitative technology
(incl. transport and services)
(3) Affluence, lifestyle and consumption patterns
Concept 2: Sociometabolic
regimes and transitions
Theory of sociometabolic regimes
The theory of sociometabolic regimes (Sieferle) claims that, in
world history, certain modes of human production can be broadly
distinguished by the way they utilize and thereby modify nature.
Key constraint: energy system (sources of energy and main
technologies of energy conversion).
Result: characteristic metabolic profile (range of materials and
energy use per capita)
Slide courtesy: Fischer-Kowalski and colleagues
‚Socio-ecolgical regimes‘ in human history
hunter and gatherer
society
agrarian
society
industrial
society
1t biomass (food, wood)
<0,1t minerals (stones, metals)
4t biomass (food, fodder, wood)
0,2-2t minerals (stones, metals)
5t biomass (food, fodder, wood)
5t fossil fuel energy carriers
8t construction minerals
2t metals
_______________________________
20t total DMC/cap*yr
26
Willi Haas
Source: SEC database
Material metabolism in t/cap*yr
Willi Haas and Marina Fischer-Kowalski| ETUI monthly forum | 26.6.2012| 26
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Energy consumption per capita depends on socioecological
regime
Hunter &
Gatherer
Agrarian
societies
Industrial
society
~ 10
40-70
140-440
avg 280
GJ/cap*yr
regimes Source: Sieferle et al. 2006, Schandl et al. 2008, SEC database
Human metabolism 3,5 GJ/cap*yr
0,0
5,0
10,0
15,0
20,0
25,0
SangSaeng, T
hailand
1998
T
rinket, N
icobars 2000
T
örbel, Switzerland
1875
A
ustria
1830
U
K
1884*
A
ustria
1991
Germ
any
1991
Japan
1991
N
etherlands 1991
U
SA
1991
Sweden
1991
U
K
1991
t/capita
Biomass Minerals Fossils Products
Metabolic profiles by sociometabolic
regimes (DMC/capita)
Agrarian Societies Industrial SocietiesMeans
* UK 1884: DMI data
Sociometabolic profiles of
key production regimes
Indicator Hunt&Gath. Agrarian Industrial Factor
Pop. density [cap/km²] <4 <40 <400 3-10
Agricultural population [%] n.a. >80% <10% 8-9
Material use – DMC [t/cap/yr] 1-2 3-6 15-25 3-5
Energy use – DEC [GJ/cap/yr] 10-20 40-70 150-400 3-5
Share of biomass [% of DEC] >99% >95% 10-30% 3-5
Man-made artefacts – Stocks [t/cap] <1 2-20 250-400 10-20
Time in economic work [h/adult/day] 1-3 5-6 8-9.5 2-4
Energy use per area [GJ/ha] <1 <30 <600 10-30
Material use per area [t/ha] <0.1 <2 <50 10-30
the energy transition: from biomass to
fossil fuels
Martens and Rotmans 2002
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Energy consumption per capita depends on
socio-ecological regime
Hunter &
Gatherer
Agrarian
societies
~ 10
40-70
140-440
avg 280
GJ/cap*yr
regimes
Post-
industrial
society
avg 100 ?
(<20C)
?
Industrial
society
Source: Sieferle et al. 2006, Schandl et al. 2008, SEC database – and: Hall and Klitgaard 2012
Willi Haas and Marina Fischer-Kowalski| ETUI monthly forum | 26.6.2012| 31
How does the metabolism of
societies affect land use?
Concept 3:
Colonization of natural systems
HANPP: measuring impacts of land use
HANPP measures
changes in yearly
biomass flows in
ecosystems resulting
from land use
Society
Resources gained
Work / energy invested
Natural ecosystem
Colonized systemChange
induced
through
colonization
An integrated socio-ecological perspective on global
biomass flows: The HANPP approach
Potential vegetation
NPP0
Productivity of
potential vegetation
(hypothetical vegetation
assumed to prevail in the
absence of land use; e.g.,
forests, grasslands, savannahs,
deserts, shrubs, etc.
Actual vegetation
NPPact
Productivity of actual
vegetation
(including croplands,
grasslands, built-up area, etc.
NPP remaining after
harvest
NPPt
Energy remaining in
the ecosystem after
harvest
Productivity change
(∆NPPLC)
Harvest (NPPh)
Human approriation of NPP
(HANPP)
• Indicator of land-use intensity
• ‚Pressure‘ indicator, useful to analyze
drivers of land use
Concept 4:
Functional time use
(a biophysical resource)
Human time and metabolism
Time is considered as a limited biophysical resource; time budgeting is a
consequence of the fact that when a person is engaged in one primary
activity, it is restricted from doing another primary activity simultaneously
Human time has some interesting features such as:
all human time has to be used somehow; preference for one activity over
another is contingent on culturally prescribed means of self maintenance
and reproduction;
all human time normally has to be metabolically sustained by the society,
as each human lifetime hour, whether “productive” or not, requires a
certain metabolic input, or else people starve and die.
disposal over the use of time, own time as well as time of other people,
is one major marker of freedom and power.
How to link social metabolism, time use and labour time
– implications for a sustainability transition
First link:
Social metabolism is driven by human production (human labour, working
time, reinforced by technology and energy use)
Second link:
Social metabolism is driven by human consumption (demographic growth,
life styles, purchasing power)
Feedback:
investment of labour time produces income, and income produces
consumption (rebound effect)
Third link:
Sustainability, in its core, has to do with securing (high quality) human life
time in the future. This needs to be achieved with as little resource use and
environmental impact as possible.
Interlinkages within the social system
Economic
system
Community
Ecossystem services
Physical work
Time
Money
Goods /
services
Relevant
natural
systems
Household
Person
major transition: time use
Social system
Labour hours in the economy
0
1
2
3
4
5
Trinket Campo Bello Nalang Japan 1870 Germany 1870 Japan 2000 Germany 2000
(hunter & gatherer) (swidden
agriculture)
(tradional farming) (traditional farming,
beginning of
industrialization)
(traditional
agriculture, cities
industrialized)
(industrialized) (industrialized)
Trinket Campo Bello Germany 2000Nalang Germany 1870Japan 1870 Japan 2000
Number of
hours for
average
inhabitant and
average day of
the year
Sources: Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011 (for Trinket, Campo Bello and Nalang), Maddison 2001 (for Japan), Clearingstelle Verkehr 2012 (for Germany 2001/02
Household and family work: 2,1 hrs/day
Kušová, (Jan) Těšitel, Bartoš. 2009. Biosphere reserves as learning sites of
sustainable development. In: Social Development
Chaplin et al. 2004. Agricultural adjustment and the diversification of farm
households and corporate farms in Central Europe. In: Journal of rural Studies 20,
61-77
Kuskova et al. 2008. Long term changes in societal metabolism and land use in
Czechoslovakia 1830-2000: an energy transition under changing political regimes.
In: Ecological Economics 68 1-2, 394-407
Singh et al. 2010. Local Studies Manual: A researcher’s guide for investigating the
social metabolism of local rural systems. In: Social Ecology Working Paper 120
Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011. Sociometabolic transitions in subsistence
communities: Boserup revisted in four comparative case studies. In: Human
Ecology Review 18 2
Singh and Haas. Forthcoming. Analysing the social metabolism of ‘local systems’:
The Nicobar Islands before and in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. In: New
book – Social Ecology
Reading
Trip Vienna to Suchdol/Klikov/Frantiskov
• Franz Josefs Bahnhof: departure 10:29
• Czeske Velenice 12:51 - 13:19
• Suchdol nad Luznici 13:38
• 20 minutes bicycle trip
• We meet on May 12 at 10:00 to organize tickets: Vienna –
Czeske Velonice
• Einfach Raus Radticket costs 44 Euro for up to 5 persons
• Velonice – Suchdol we buy in Velonice (is relatively cheap)