The Social Metabolism
The Social Metabolism

Author: Manuel González de Molina

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-06-30

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 3319063588

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Over this last decade, the concept of Social Metabolism has gained prestige as a theoretical instrument for the required analysis, to such an extent that there are now dozens of researchers, hundreds of articles and several books that have adopted and use this concept. However, there is a great deal of variety in terms of definitions and interpretations, as well as different methodologies around this concept, which prevents the consolidation of a unified field of new knowledge. The fundamental aim of the book is to conduct a review of the past and present usage of the concept of social metabolism, its origins and history, as well as the main currents or schools that exist around this concept. At the same time, the reviews and discussions included are used by the authors as starting points to draw conclusions and propose a theory of socio-ecological transformations. The theoretical and methodological innovations of this book include a distinction of two types of metabolic processes: tangible and intangible; the analysis of the social metabolism at different scales (in space and time) and a theory of socio-ecological change overcoming the merely “systemic” or “cybernetic” nature of conventional approaches, giving special protagonism to collective action.

Environmental Governance in Latin America
Environmental Governance in Latin America

Author: Fabio De Castro

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-03-24

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1137505729

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This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics
Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics

Author: Clive L. Spash

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 787

ISBN-13: 1317395093

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Since becoming formally established with an international academic society in the late 1980s, ecological economics has advanced understanding of the interactions between social and biophysical reality. It initially combined questioning of the basis of mainstream economics with a concern for environmental degradation and limits to growth, but has now advanced well beyond critique into theoretical, analytical and policy alternatives. Social ecological economics and transformation to an alternative future now form core ideas in an interdisciplinary approach combining insights from a range of disciplines including heterodox economics, political ecology, sociology, political science, social psychology, applied philosophy, environmental ethics and a range of natural sciences. This handbook, edited by a leading figure in the field, demonstrates the dynamism of ecological economics in a wide-ranging collection of state-of-the-art essays. Containing contributions from an array of international researchers who are pushing the boundaries of the field, the Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics showcases the diversity of the field and points the way forward. A critical analytical perspective is combined with realism about how economic systems operate and their essential connection to the natural world and society. This provides a rich understanding of how biophysical reality relates to and integrates with social reality. Chapters provide succinct overviews of the literature covering a range of subject areas including: heterodox thought on the environment; society, power and politics, markets and consumption; value and ethics; science and society; methods for evaluation and policy analysis; policy challenges; and the future post-growth society. The rich contents dispel the myth of there being no alternatives to current economic thought and the political economy it supports. The Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics provides a guide to the literature on ecological economics in an informative and easily accessible form. It is essential reading for those interested in exploring and understanding the interactions between the social, ecological and economic and is an important resource for those interested in fields such as: human ecology, political ecology, environmental politics, human geography, environmental management, environmental evaluation, future and transition studies, environmental policy, development studies and heterodox economics.

The Metabolism of Islands
The Metabolism of Islands

Author: Simron Singh

Publisher: MDPI

Published: 2021-08-04

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 3036509364

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This book makes the case for why we should care about islands and their sustainability. Islands are hotspots of biocultural diversity and home to 600 million people that depend on one-sixth of the earth’s total area, including the surrounding oceans, for their subsistence. Today, they are at the frontlines of climate change and face an existential crisis. Islands are, however, potential “hubs of innovation” that are uniquely positioned to be leaders in sustainability and climate action. This volume argues that a full-fledged program on “island industrial ecology” is urgently needed, with the aim of offering policy-relevant insights and strategies to sustain small islands in an era of global environmental change. The nine contributions in this volume cover a wide range of applications of socio-metabolic research, from flow accounts to stock analysis and their relationship to services in space and time. They offer insights into how reconfiguring patterns of resource use will allow island governments to build resilience and adapt to the challenges of climate change.

Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology
Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology

Author: Roland Clift

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-12-11

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 3319205714

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How can we design more sustainable industrial and urban systems that reduce environmental impacts while supporting a high quality of life for everyone? What progress has been made towards reducing resource use and waste, and what are the prospects for more resilient, material-efficient economies? What are the environmental and social impacts of global supply chains and how can they be measured and improved? Such questions are at the heart of the emerging discipline of industrial ecology, covered in Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology. Leading authors, researchers and practitioners review how far industrial ecology has developed and current issues and concerns, with illustrations of what the industrial ecology paradigm has achieved in public policy, corporate strategy and industrial practice. It provides an introduction for students coming to industrial ecology and for professionals who wish to understand what industrial ecology can offer, a reference for researchers and practitioners and a source of case studies for teachers.

Towards an Integrated Paradigm in Heterodox Economics
Towards an Integrated Paradigm in Heterodox Economics

Author: J. Gerber

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 9781349338252

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The human imprint on the biosphere has become so pronounced in recent years that there has been talk of a new geological era, the 'Anthropocene'. Gathering contributions from some of the world's foremost heterodox economists, this book explores the new economic directions and paradigms that are required to respond to this crisis.

Socioecological Transitions and Global Change
Socioecological Transitions and Global Change

Author: Marina Fischer-Kowalski

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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'In an important contribution to sustainability science, Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl extend the frontiers of contemporary socio-ecological research to articulate a theory of material, energy and land-use transitions across multiple scales based on detailed empirical studies in Europe and Asia. The insights it presents on agrarian-industrial transitions are crucial to understand the potential impact of emerging nations like India and China on global change.' - Aromar Revi, India China Institute, The New School University, US 'This volume represents the culmination of several years of empirical research and refinement of the social metabolism approach. That approach is one of the most exciting and illuminating innovations in the fields of human ecology, industrial ecology, and environmental history. Here the team from Vienna's Institute of Social Ecology shows masterfully how the insights of social metabolism shed light on transitions to high-energy society in Austria, in Britain, and in the world at large.' - J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, US This significant new book analyses fundamental changes in society-nature interaction: the socioeconomic use of materials, energy and land. The volume presents a number of case studies addressing transitions from an agrarian to an industrial socioecological regime, analysed within the materials and energy flow accounting (MEFA) framework. It is argued that by concentrating on the biophysical dimensions of change in the course of industrialization, social development issues can be explicitly linked to changes in the natural environment. From the historical transition in Europe, to current transitions in developing countries, the book offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of transition processes across scales, from local to national. The comparison of historical and current assessments allows a theory of the underlying patterns of the agrarian-industrial transition to emerge. On this basis, future trends and possible pathways towards (or indeed further departures from) sustainability are discussed. Empirical in character and cautious in its assumptions, this insightful book provides rich and in-depth material for further studies in socioecological research. It will be essential reading for students and researchers of ecological economics, industrial ecology, human ecology, environmental sociology, environmental history, geography as well as land, energy and development studies.

Sustainable Urban Metabolism
Sustainable Urban Metabolism

Author: Paulo Ferrao

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-08-30

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0262019361

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A unified framework for analyzing urban sustainability in terms of cities' inflows and outflows of matter and energy. Urbanization and globalization have shaped the last hundred years. These two dominant trends are mutually reinforcing: globalization links countries through the networked communications of urban hubs. The urban population now generates more than eighty percent of global GDP. Cities account for enormous flows of energy and materials—inflows of goods and services and outflows of waste. Thus urban environmental management critically affects global sustainability. In this book, Paulo Ferrão and John Fernández offer a metabolic perspective on urban sustainability, viewing the city as a metabolism, in terms of its exchanges of matter and energy. Their book provides a roadmap to the strategies and tools needed for a scientifically based framework for analyzing and promoting the sustainability of urban systems. Using the concept of urban metabolism as a unifying framework, Ferrão and Fernandez describe a systems-oriented approach that establishes useful linkages among environmental, economic, social, and technical infrastructure issues. These linkages lead to an integrated information-intensive platform that enables ecologically informed urban planning. After establishing the theoretical background and describing the diversity of contributing disciplines, the authors sample sustainability approaches and tools, offer an extended study of the urban metabolism of Lisbon, and outline the challenges and opportunities in approaching urban sustainability in both developed and developing countries.

Social Ecology
Social Ecology

Author: Helmut Haberl

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 651

ISBN-13: 3319333267

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This book presents the current state of the art in Social Ecology as practiced by the Vienna School of Social Ecology, globally one of the main research groups in this field. As a significant contribution to the growing literature on interdisciplinary sustainability studies, the book introduces the purpose and nature of Social Ecology and then places the “Vienna School” within the broader context of socioecological and other interdisciplinary environmental approaches. The conceptual and methodological foundations of Social Ecology are discussed in detail, allowing the reader to obtain a broad overview of current socioecological thinking. Issues covered include socio-metabolic transitions, socioecological approaches to land use, the relation between actor-centered and system approaches, a socioecological theory of labor and the importance of legacies, as conceived in Environmental History and in Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research. To underpin this overview empirically, the strengths of socioecological research are elucidated in cases of cutting-edge research, introducing a variety of themes the Vienna School has been tackling empirically over the past years. Given how the field is presented – reflecting research carried out on different scales, reaching from local to global as well as from past to present and future – and due to the way the book is structured, it is suitable for classroom use, as a primer, and also as an overview of how Social Ecology evolved, right up to its current research frontiers.

Understanding Urban Metabolism
Understanding Urban Metabolism

Author: Nektarios Chrysoulakis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-27

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1317658663

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Understanding Urban Metabolism addresses the gap between the bio-physical sciences and urban planning and illustrates the advantages of accounting for urban metabolism issues in urban design decisions. Urban metabolism considers a city as a system, and distinguishes between energy and material flows as its components. Based on research from the BRIDGE project, this book deals with how the urban surface exchanges and transforms energy, water, carbon and pollutants in cities. This book also introduces a new method for evaluating how planning alternatives can modify the physical flows of urban metabolism components and how environmental and socioeconomic components interact. The inclusion of sustainability principles into urban planning provides an opportunity to place the new knowledge provided by bio-physical sciences at the centre of the planning process, but there is a strong need to bridge knowledge and practice, as well as for a better dissemination of research results and exchange of best practice. This book meets that need and provides the reader with the necessary tools to integrate an understanding of urban metabolism into urban planning practice.