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| Title | Author(s) | Type | Year | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Examining urban metabolism: A material flow perspective on cities and their sustainability The resource challenge associated with anthropogenic forces gained attention in recent years. However, the pathways toward urban sustainability are complicated and depend on local conditions, which need an understanding of the characteristics of urban metabolism (hereafter referred to as “UM”). This study adopts the flow perspective and develops a methodological framework to conduct a local-scale assessment of resource input to an urban system and related consumption, stock, and output. Through categorizing human activities and describing inner flows, a model of urban metabolism is constructed to clarify interrelationships among different sectors within the urban system, enabling the estimation of material dynamics. By determining metabolism profile and resource scarcity, the results reveals how metabolism takes effect on surrounding environment and urban resilience. This methodological framework is demonstrated through a case study of Guangzhou, China. The main characteristics identified are diversified material consumption, high resource intensity, dependence on non-metallic material and fossil energy import, and a high percentage of CO2 emission associated with industrial production. This result is meaningful in understanding the local resource scarcity and driving a regenerative process in Guangzhou, which is an industry-based economy. Advanced policy is further suggested that refers to clean energy use, waste management techniques, rigorous population control, and advanced measures and data sharing platform in urban management. These findings suggest the need to rethink the trajectory of urban development and gain awareness of the need to focus on new local initiatives in resource use optimization. None | Examining urban metabolism: A material flow perspective on cities and ... | Cui, Xuezhu; Wang, Xuetong; Feng, Yunyu | Journal Article | academic | 2019 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Urban
Zotero import
|
| Panorama Paquetá A circular strategy and architectural design for the Brazilian island Paquetá, located in the heavily polluted bay of Rio de Janeiro. The current take-make-dispose economy, resulting in resource pressure and environmental problems, calls for a circular economy. Islands are perfect living laboratories, because of their clearly defined boundaries and vulnerability to external factors. In this graduation project, Ilha de Paquetá in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is taken as a case study. It suffers from the external pollution of the Guanabara Bay in both ecological and economic terms (due to a tourism decline), but the island’s metabolism itself is as linear as the system that causes the bay pollution. For successful implementation of circular interventions, a system-level perspective, based on a Material Flow Analysis for energy, water, and materials, is combined with a hyper-local and pragmatic approach to getting a real ‘sense of place’. The result is, firstly, a long-term strategy for Paquetá to improve the environmental state of the island. And, secondly, an architectural design for a beach pool that forms an alternative for the polluted beaches to enhance tourism. The pool regenerates and utilizes polluted bay water, purified via the wetlands that are integrated part of the design. The impact of the building on the island’s metabolism lies in the integration of a biodigester to reduce the organic waste outflow, and value to the local society and culture is added with adjacent spaces that accommodate room for community events and small-scale, conscious tourism. This way, the project shows how the Circular Economy system-level perspective can be combined with a hyper-local and pragmatic approach to achieve social inclusion. | Panorama Paquetá | Luken, Lodewijk | Thesis | theses | 2019 |
Circular Economy
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Sub-national
|
| The Sustainability of Humanitarian Aid: The Nicobar Islands as a Case of ‘Complex Disaster' By virtue of being close to the epicentre, the Nicobar Islands located in the Bay of Bengal was severely affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Overwhelming aid followed, transforming an indigenous community of hunters-and-gatherers and coconut growers into a consumer society in a matter of months. Based on several years of fieldwork, this chapter describes the tsunami and its aftermath, the role of aid organisations, the media and the government in driving the islanders from a self-reliant to an aid dependent society, plagued with social conflicts. We call this a ‘complex disaster’, a situation that has fundamentally challenged the socio-ecological system to reproduce itself, an effect more severe and longer lasting than what the disaster itself had accomplished. In other words, a complex disaster is a consequence of inappropriate interventions following a “simple” disaster, which affects the social system’s ability to regenerate, to govern its own recovery, by interfering with its cultural, economic and political regulation. This in turn effects the environmental relations of the society, and its social metabolism. | The Sustainability of Humanitarian Aid: The Nicobar Islands as a ... | Singh, Simron; Fischer-Kowalski, Marina; Haas, Willi | Book Section | academic | 2018 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Rural
Sub-national
Sustainable production and consumption
Time series
|
| Decentralised Organic Resource Treatments – Classification and comparison through Extended Material Flow Analysis The article presents a classification and comparison of Decentralised Organic Resource Treatments (DORTs), a term that refers to relatively small-scale biowaste treatments that have emerged as a promising alternative to centralised, industrial facilities. Despite growing interest from policy makers and waste professionals, accessible and coherent information on different decentralised treatments is currently not available. To overcome this gap in the literature, we propose an Extended Material Flow Analysis (EMFA) based on a review of the literature and expert interviews. In addition to flows of inputs and outputs, the EMFA also accounts on the economic, normative, and technical aspects of each treatment. The final EMFA database includes seven broad types of DORTs (composting, anaerobic digestion, dehydration, lactic acid fermentation, mulching, vermicomposting and animal valorisation) that are further divided into 18 representative models. The most relevant and comparable variables are summarised in form of synthetic flow diagrams. | Decentralised Organic Resource Treatments – Classification and comparison through Extended ... | Andrea Bortolotti, Stephan Kampelmann, Simon De Muynck | Journal Article | academic | 2018 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Urban
|
| Urban Metabolism of Intermediate Cities: The Material Flow Analysis, Hinterlands and the Logistics‐Hub Function of Rennes and Le Mans (France) Although urban metabolism has been a subject of renewed interest for some years, the related studies remain fragmented throughout the world. Most of them concern major cities (megacities and/or national capitals) and, more rarely, intermediate, medium‐sized or small cities. However, urbanization trends show that together with the metropolization process, another one is characterized by the proliferation of intermediate cities. We have studied the metabolism of two French intermediate cities for the year 2012: Rennes Métropole (400,000 inhabitants) and Le Mans Métropole (200,000 inhabitants). To this end, we used material flow analysis (MFA) based on the methodology developed by Eurostat, adapted to the subnational level. This has been made possible by the use, for the first time, of very precise statistical sources concerning freight. We have developed a multiscale approach in order to weigh the urban metabolism of those two cities and to compare it to other cases and larger territories. This allows a better understanding of the specific territorial metabolism of intermediate cities, their hinterlands, and their logistics‐hub function. We conclude with the “urban dimension” of social metabolism, and, thanks to the multiscale approach, to the debate regarding logistical hubs, dematerialization, and territorial autonomy. | Urban Metabolism of Intermediate Cities: The Material Flow Analysis, Hinterlands ... | Bahers, Barles, Durand | Journal Article | academic | 2018 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Multi-scale
Sub-national
Urban
|
| Using Web‐Based Technology to Bring Hands‐On Urban Material Flow Analysis to the Classroom The main objective of this article is to introduce an open‐source, online software tool called OMAT as a teaching tool for performing economy wide‐material flow analysis (EW‐MFA) at urban or regional level in industrial ecology curricula. To that intent, we present a classroom and project activity that was developed for a masters‐level industrial ecology course offered by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Insights are provided with regards to the outcome of the classroom exercise as well as lessons learned from both an academic and a software development point of view. The OMAT software provides users with a specialized tool to enter and process MFA data in a simple, intuitive way. The usefulness of OMAT as a teaching tool was tested by engaging students in a classroom activity that entailed using OMAT as a tool to perform an EW‐MFA applied to the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona for the years 2005‐2011. The aim of this exercise was to teach students specific skills required in performing an EW‐MFA, not through theory classes, but hands‐on through a learn‐as‐you‐go approach. The exercise not only equipped the students with knowledge about MFA, but also introduced them to solving problems as a team, meeting project deadlines, and communicating effectively with colleagues from different disciplines and backgrounds. Even though there is room for further improvements, this exercise showed that OMAT provided a useful addition to traditional methods that allowed students to get a more practical and thorough understanding of the MFA methodology. | Using Web‐Based Technology to Bring Hands‐On Urban Material Flow Analysis ... | Gara Villalba and Paul Hoekman | Journal Article | academic | 2017 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Time series
Urban
|
| A Database to Facilitate a Process-Oriented Approach to Urban Metabolism In view of urbanization trends coupled with climate-change challenges, it is increasingly important to establish less-harmful means of urban living. To date, urban metabolism (UM) studies have quantified the aggregate material and energy flows into and out of cities and, further, have identified how consumer activity causes these flows. However, little attention has been paid to the networks of conversion processes that link consumer end-use demands to aggregate metabolic flows. Here, we conduct a systematic literature search to assemble a database of 202 urban energy, water, and waste management processes. We show how the database can help planners and policy makers choose the preferred process to meet a specific resource management need; identify synergies between energy, water, and waste management processes; and compute optimal networks of processes to meet an area's consumer demand at minimum environmental cost. We make our database publicly available under an open-source license and discuss the possibilities for how it might be used alongside other industrial ecology data sets to enhance research opportunities. This will encourage more holistic UM analyses, which appreciate how both consumer activity and the engineered urban system work together to influence aggregate metabolic flows and thus support efforts to make cities more sustainable. | A Database to Facilitate a Process-Oriented Approach to Urban Metabolism | Ravalde, Tom and Keirstead, James | Journal Article | academic | 2017 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Urban
|
| Accounting for material flows across the Center-Val de Loire region This report deals with an Material Flow Analysis (MFA) for the region Centre Val de Loire in France. It was driven by the DREAL Centre-Val de Loire which wanted to get a regional MFA. This MFA will allow to analyze those main flows which get inside the system, to be transformed, stored or dischared in the nature. In order to so, the DREAL asked the CEREMA to realize this MFA according to the Region Centre-Val de Loire characteristics. Based on this study, the DREAL's aim was also to design more efficient resource strategies and management. Ce rapport présente les résultats d'une Analyse de Flux de Matières (AFM) réalisée à l'échelle de la Région Centre-Val de Loire en France. La DREAL Centre-Val de Loire a souhaité disposer d’une comptabilité des flux de matière à l’échelle de la région lui permettant d’analyser les principaux flux de matière entrant dans le territoire, pour y être transformés, stockés ou rejetés vers la nature en flux sortant. Elle a confié au Cerema la réalisation de cette étude adaptée en fonction des particularités du territoire. Par ailleurs, le second objectif de la DREAL est, à partir de cet examen, d’élaborer des stratégies concrètes visant une meilleure efficacité dans l’utilisation des ressources du territoire. | Accounting for material flows across the Center-Val de Loire region | Cécile Dormoy & Cassandre Mercier | Report | reports | 2017 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Sub-national
|
| Urban metabolism: A review with reference to Cape Town Improved sustainability of cities requires equitably distributed and ecologically safe, if not restorative, infrastructure systems, as well as reduced reliance on resources from beyond urban boundaries. To shape infrastructure systems in a sustainable and equitable manner, knowledge about the sources and demands of the resources they convey is necessary, as well as the technologies which ensure their efficient use and safe return to the environment. This paper undertakes a basic urban metabolism assessment to examine resource consumption in the City of Cape Town. It examines the type and quantity of resources which fuel the city and its people, in order to highlight prospects for the sustainability of Cape Town. Key findings from resource profiles of Cape Town show that annual energy and water consumption, which are feared to be approaching system limits, have actually shown decline in consumption since 2007 and 2011 respectively. The key intervention to reduce energy consumption and resultant carbon emissions lies in reducing low-occupancy private car usage, while the key limitations to reducing raw water abstraction through wastewater reuse is the limited ability to store and redistribute it. Comparing maps of resource access to maps of material stocks shows that while the city periphery experiences low resource access, resource stocks are potentially quite dense. The spatial location of resource stock, flow and consumption represents a useful tool for detailed urban planning and service delivery, and is a gap in need of researching. Although flows of food are difficult to track, estimates suggest that 11.6% of the food processed in Cape Town is grown within municipal boundaries and interventions for keeping nutrients in the system should be explored. Examining the flow of people between suburbs over time shows that migration dynamics are entrenching poverty in already high poverty suburbs, as people with economic means are more likely to move to better serviced suburbs than invest in their current ones. This presents a need for the city to invest in these underserviced areas, so as to retain personal investment. Key recommendations for urban and resource planning are the integrated analysis of resource nexuses using system dynamics modelling, as well as integrating departments within the municipality, to enable more holistic intervention strategies. To aid this, research into a baseline examination of differential spatial and temporal flows of resources at suburb level is currently underway. | Urban metabolism: A review with reference to Cape Town | Paul Klugman Currie and Josephine Kaviti Musango and Nhlanhla Desire May | Journal Article | academic | 2017 |
Cape Town
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
South Africa
Urban
|
| Downscaling Aggregate Urban Metabolism Accounts to Local Districts Urban metabolism accounts of total annual energy, water, and other resource flows are increasingly available for a variety of world cities. For local decision makers, however, it may be important to understand the variations of resource consumption within the city. Given the difficulty of gathering suburban resource consumption data for many cities, this article investigates the potential of statistical downscaling methods to estimate local resource consumption using socioeconomic or other data sources. We evaluate six classes of downscaling methods: ratio-based normalization; linear regression (both internally and externally calibrated); linear regression with spatial autocorrelation; multilevel linear regression; and a basic Bayesian analysis. The methods were applied to domestic energy consumption in London, UK, and our results show that it is possible to downscale aggregate resource consumption to smaller geographies with an average absolute prediction error of around 20%; however, performance varies widely by method, geography size, and fuel type. We also show how mapping these results can quickly identify districts with noteworthy resource consumption profiles. Further work should explore the design of local data collection strategies to enhance these methods and apply the techniques to other urban resources such as water or waste. | Downscaling Aggregate Urban Metabolism Accounts to Local Districts | Horta, Isabel M. and Keirstead, James | Journal Article | academic | 2017 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Scaling
Urban
|
| Estimating the Potential for Urban Mining in Paris Region Construction materials are the largest flows entering urban areas after water, while they constitute the top waste deposit (Matthews et al., 2000). The consumption of these mostly non-renewable materials generates environmental impacts and land-use conflicts, from extraction to end-life management and especially storage. Moreover, urbanisation strongly constrains local mineral resources extraction, which leads to the extension of the supplying areas. Materials contained in a city today, in the form of buildings and networks, could potentially be recycled tomorrow through urban mining and so partly substitute for primary resources in highly urbanised countries (Brunner, 2011). The joint analysis of flows and stock of construction materials is therefore an important issue in terms of understanding and managing the metabolism of socioeconomic systems. This is bound up with significant methodological challenges concerning the knowledge of flows and stock of existing materials, in terms of quantity and location, along with short-term forecasting which is essential to anticipating and acting on metabolism. A three years research project launched in 2014 by Géographie-Cités laboratory aims at helping regional authorities to set urban mining objectives until 2030. It is financed by the regional council (Région Ile-de-France) which is in charge of the C&D waste management plan, and the regional office for environment (DRIEE) responsible of the quarries regulation plan. First, construction materials flows were studied through a top-down material flow analysis for Paris Region and its administrative divisions (départements) in 2001 and 2013. The Eurostat top-down MFA method adapted to urban and regional scales by Barles (2009) was used. Then the stock contained in buildings and networks was studied in terms of quantity and location for the entire region through a bottom-up assessment. For buildings, a 3D geographical database called BD Topo® was matched with local tax records which contain information on construction years, economic activities and materials in wall structures. Materials stocked in road, rail, electricity, gas, heat and water networks were estimated with BD Topo® and data from networks managers. Domestic material consumption (DMC) of Paris region reaches 2.5 t/inhab. in 2013. Annual net addition to stock amounts for 2.0 t/inhab. while total stock estimation is 226 t/inhab. While non metallic minerals form 95 % of the DMC, used domestic extraction of these materials decreases and only amounts for 85 % of non metallic minerals imports in 2013. Paris urban area (city and petite couronne) has the lowest DMC (1.8 t/inhab.) in the region, but also the most important local and exported processed outputs (0.8 t/inhab.). Regional development plan for 2030 (SDRIF) sets high annual construction objectives for Paris urban area that imply a strong increase of building renewal. Buildings form 79 % of material stock in this area with a building stock density that reaches 12,277 t/ha in 2013. Objectives of the development plan and statistics on demolition during the last decade are used to estimate future input and output flows until 2030 and hence the potential for urban mining. | Estimating the Potential for Urban Mining in Paris Region | Sabine Barles, Vincent Augiseau | Conference Paper | None | 2017 |
Construction
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Material Stock Analysis (MSA)
Single point in time
Sub-national
Time series
Urban
|
| Coupling Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) Methodologies for Screening Flow and Emission of Biomass Energy in the Agricultural System In the agriculture sector, sustainability retention of biomass management is a complicated issue, especially without increasing potential damage towards the environment. This study aims to develop an integrated MAGI conceptual framework using Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) to measure and display spatial biomass energy flow in an agricultural system in Kuala Terengganu. The scope for this research consists of two dominant pools namely crop production and livestock production. By integrating the MFA inventory data, biomass energy model for the year 2016 has been developed based on early results obtained. The study found that the major portion of the energy is focused in crop production, which is 56% higher than livestock production. The findings also estimated 35% agricultural waste recovery potential It seems that the integration of MFA and GIS is an interesting, ideal, and powerful combination of decision making tool because it is able to provide information and firm decision on the development of bioenergy management system and can be used to implement strategies to reduce energy use and pollutants released into the environment. | Coupling Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) ... | Latifah A. Ghani | Conference Paper | None | 2017 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Food and agriculture
Geographic Information System (GIS)
Sub-national
|
| Material Flow Accounts and Driving Factors of Economic Growth in the Philippines This study looks into material flow trends in the Philippines from 1985 to 2010 by utilizing the methodology of economy-wide material flow analysis. Using domestic data sources, this study presents disaggregated annual material flow trends in terms of four major material categories, namely: biomass; fossil energy carriers; ores and industrial minerals; and construction minerals. The results describe in detail the growth of material flows in a high-density country at the onset of its development and reveal the shift of material consumption from dominance of renewable materials in 1985 to nonrenewable materials in 2010. IPAT analysis shows that the increase in material consumption was driven by population growth from 1985 to 1998 and by growth in affluence from 1999 to 2010. However, high inequalities amidst the growing economy suggest that a small group of wealthy people have influenced the acceleration of material consumption in the Philippines. The results of this research are intended to provide a thorough analysis of the processes occurring in Philippine economic growth in order to assist in tackling implications for the important issue of sustainable resource management. | Material Flow Accounts and Driving Factors of Economic Growth in ... | Marianne Faith G. Martinico‐Perez, Tomer Fishman, Keijiro Okuoka, Hiroki Tanikawa | Journal Article | academic | 2017 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
National
Time series
|
| Urban Metabolism for Resource-Efficient Cities: from Theory to Implementation This report is a review of urban resource assessment tools that can guide a city-level resource efficiency transition, using urban metabolism assessment as the guiding framework. This study was the outcome of a collaboration between the Sustainability Institute (www.sustainabilityinstitute.net) and UN Environment (www.unep.org) under the framework of the Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities (www.resourceefficientcities.org). | Urban Metabolism for Resource-Efficient Cities: from Theory to Implementation | Josephine Kaviti Musango and Paul Currie and Blake Robinson | Report | reports | 2017 |
Agent-based modelling (ABM)
Ecological Footprint (EF)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Emergy Analysis
Input-Output Analysis (IOA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Physical Input-Output Table (PIOT)
Report
Review Paper
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Urban
Zotero import
|
| Modeling of material and energy flows in the Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy using urban metabolism approaches A major challenge to urban sustainability research today is to understand the urban metabolic profile of cities and predict how cities with different socio-economic, demographic, and geographic characteristics interact with the natural environment in which they exist. Due to the increasing growth in cities and high dense concentrations it is necessary to understand the complexity of the urban socio-economic phenomena, different forms of resource consumption and energy intensities in cities. Data was collected from public and private databases; scales of data included local, regional, and national level. The study applied mathematical modeling and energy flow simulation model approaches: 1. convection-diffusion model [1]; 2. quantitative network model and 3. neural network model, to capture the metabolic flow profile of a system between cities in the Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy. The data analysis combined a set of statistical socio economic, material and energy flow data; and multi-parameter clustering analysis to demonstrate energy and demographic behavioral flow interconnections, similarities and differences of material and energy consumption flows within build clusters. Applied, Group Method of Data Handling approach to forecast material and energy consumption, economic growth and the relationship of the data to understand the territorial metabolism [2] of a city through networks, economies and infrastructure. AMMODIT and final EUMLS Workshop Mathematics for Life Sciences (http://www.math.uni-luebeck.de/EUMLS-AMMODIT2016/) | Modeling of material and energy flows in the Metropolitan City ... | Gabriela Fernandez, Igor Tereshchenko | Conference Paper | None | 2016 |
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Energy
Energy/Emergy
Imports and Exports
Italy
Material Stock Analysis (MSA)
Method
Metropolitan
Milan
Policy
Research and Analysis
Urban Ecology
|
| Quantifying Impacts of Consumption Based Charge for Carbon Intensive Materials on Products After the Paris Climate Agreement, it is anticipated that carbon prices will differ across regions for some time. If countries use free allowance allocation as carbon leakage protection, only a fraction of carbon prices are passed through to consumers particularly by carbon intensive materials producers. Adding a consumption charge based on benchmarks applied to the material content can reinstate the carbon price signal. The paper investigates the implications of such a consumption charge for industry and consumers based on material flow analysis and material flow cost accounting. The material‐related carbon liabilities for production, import, export, and consumption are estimated for 4000 commodity groups that contain one or more of the five bulk materials steel, aluminium, plastics, paper, and cement. Assuming an underlying carbon price of 30 Euros per ton of CO2, the total charge to European final consumers is estimated to be about 17 billion EUR. The total charges levied on imports and those waived for exports are each of similar size and roughly amount to half of the total charge to European final consumers. To reduce administrative efforts, the charge is not levied on imported products for which the value of the consumption charge compared to product price falls below a threshold. Thus administrative efforts for 77 to 83% of imports could be avoided while still 85% to 90% of import‐related carbon liabilities are included. | Quantifying Impacts of Consumption Based Charge for Carbon Intensive Materials ... | Pauliuk, Stefan, and Neuhoff, Karsten, and Owen, Anne, and Wood, Richard | Report | reports | 2016 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
|
| Socioeconomic metabolism of Biomass in Jamaica in the Context of Trade and National Food Security: A time series biophysical analysis (1961-2013) This thesis presents a novel study on the historical evolution of socioeconomic metabolism of biomass in Jamaica in the context of trade and national food security. The goal of this study was to provide empirical insight into the structure of Jamaica biomass system by analyzing biomass material flows (domestic extraction, imports, and exports) from 1961 to 2013, and on this basis establish a link to the issue of national food security in Jamaica. A biomass material database in time series was constructed for Jamaica based on Eurostat methodological guidelines and general principles of economy-wide material flow account and analysis (EW-MFA). The constructed database allowed for the characterization of biomass production and consumption using the calculated material flow indicators- domestic extraction (DE), domestic consumption (DMC) and physical trade balance (PTB). The degree of import dependency was also calculated. To establish a link between patterns of biomass metabolism, trade and national food security, the scope of MFA was expanded to conduct a time series analysis of national food availability and progress towards food self-sufficiency based on analysis of dietary energy supply (DES) and dietary energy production (DEP) in Jamaica. Results obtained revealed a declining trend in both metabolic scale and metabolic rate of biomass use in Jamaica. MFA calculated indicators showed two alternating phases of growth and decline in the evolution of biomass use- peak growth (1966 and 1996) and steep decline (1981 and 2006). Primary crops dominated DE (48%) and DMC (47%). Cereals (74%) dominated physical imports flows and export flows were dominated by sugar cane (76%). Jamaica agro-food system is characterized by export oriented production as the share of mainstay food crops in overall primary crop extraction was less than 10%. A high food Import dependency ratio was observed. Food energy availability has significantly improved since 1961 from 1740 kcal/cap/day to 2470 kcal/cap/day in 2013. Jamaica is yet to achieve food self-sufficiency as DEP remains critically below the minimum dietary energy requirement threshold for Jamaica. This study contributes to the growing body of research on material flow analysis and socioeconomic metabolism. It offers a starting point for methodological enhancement of the MFA framework towards adapting it for food security studies. | Socioeconomic metabolism of Biomass in Jamaica in the Context of ... | Akunne Okoli | Thesis | theses | 2016 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Domestic extraction (DE)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Time series
|
| Towards a circular economy... of proximity? This research project aims to measure the territorial impact of waste management based on the concepts and methodologies relating to ecological footprint, environmental footprint and urban metabolism. Reflections on the notion of proximity will make it possible to propose an analysis in terms of the spatial footprint of waste management on an empirical basis. We will then be able to highlight the competences of the territorial actors in the application of this principle of proximity, considering the techno-economic realities of the waste management. Taking into account the flow of materials in a variable geometry proximity will thus play on the environmental and socio-economic impacts of waste management. A common methodology is applied to the three study cities (Le Mans, Rennes and Marne-La-Vallée) to build indicators to identify the area needed for an urban entity to treat (recover and dispose of) its waste. These results will be set against the local public policies of waste planning and more particularly of their spatial dimension. It will be understood that it is the articulation between the effective waste management territories and the planning territories. Ce projet de recherche vise à mesurer l'impact territorial de la gestion des déchets en s'appuyant sur les notions et les méthodologies relative à l'empreinte écologique, l'empreinte environnementale et au métabolisme urbain. Les réflexions autour de la notion de proximité permettront de proposer une analyse en termes d'empreinte spatiale de la gestion des déchets sur des bases empiriques. Nous pourrons ensuite mettre en exergue les compétences des acteurs territoriaux dans la mise en application de ce principe de proximité, au regard des réalités technico-économiques de la gestion des déchets. La prise en compte des flux de matières dans une proximité à géométrie variable jouera ainsi sur les impacts environnementaux et socio-économiques de la gestion des déchets. Une méthodologie commune est appliquée aux trois villes d'étude (Le Mans, Rennes et Marne-La-Vallée) afin de construire des indicateurs permettant d'identifier la superficie nécessaire à une entité urbaine pour traiter (valoriser et éliminer) ses déchets. Ces résultats seront mis au regard des politiques publiques locales de planification des déchets et plus particulièrement de leur dimension spatiale. Il s'agira de comprendre qu'elle est l'articulation entre les territoires effectifs de gestion des déchets et les territoires de planification. | Towards a circular economy... of proximity? | ADEME and Mathieu DURAND and Jean-Baptiste BAHERS and Thomas BONIERBALE and Hélène BERAUD and Bruno BARROCA | Report | reports | 2016 |
Construction Materials
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Fossil Fuels
France
Le Mans
Marne-la-Vallée
Minerals
Rennes
Waste
|
| Enhanced Performance of the Eurostat Method for Comprehensive Assessment of Urban Metabolism: A Material Flow Analysis of Amsterdam Sustainable urban resource management depends essentially on a sound understanding of a city's resource flows. One established method for analyzing the urban metabolism (UM) is the Eurostat material flow analysis (MFA). However, for a comprehensive assessment of the UM, this method has its limitations. It does not account for all relevant resource flows, such as locally sourced resources, and it does not differentiate between flows that are associated with the city's resource consumption and resources that only pass through the city. This research sought to gain insights into the UM of Amsterdam by performing an MFA employing the Eurostat method. Modifications to that method were made to enhance its performance for comprehensive UM analyses. A case study of Amsterdam for the year 2012 was conducted and the results of the Eurostat and the modified Eurostat method were compared. The results show that Amsterdam's metabolism is dominated by water flows and by port-related throughput of fossil fuels. The modified Eurostat method provides a deeper understanding of the UM than the urban Eurostat MFA attributed to three major benefits of the proposed modifications. First, the MFA presents a more complete image of the flows in the UM. Second, the modified resource classification presents findings in more detail. Third, explicating throughput flows yields a much-improved insight into the nature of a city's imports, exports, and stock. Overall, these advancements provide a deeper understanding of the UM and make the MFA method more useful for sustainable urban resource management. | Enhanced Performance of the Eurostat Method for Comprehensive Assessment of ... | Voskamp, Ilse M. and Stremke, Sven and Spiller, Marc and Perrotti, Daniela and van der Hoek, Jan Peter and Rijnaarts, Huub H. M. | Journal Article | academic | 2016 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Research and Analysis
Single point in time
UM review paper import
Urban
Zotero import
|
| Complex Disasters on the Nicobar Islands This chapter is a case study of a local rural system affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The Asian tsunami clearly revealed the vulnerability of coastal communities with respect to dealing with ecological hazards. An area that was greatly affected was the Nicobar Islands, an archipelago belonging to India and located in the Bay of Bengal. Critiquing disaster management and humanitarian aid structures, the chapter considers how an indigenous, subsistence, island community of hunter-gatherers was transformed into an aid-dependent monetary economy embedded in the regional market. Drawing on the concept of social metabolism and transitions, the chapter presents various scenarios of consumption and the consequences these will have on future material and energy demand, land use and time use for the local population. The case reveals the inherent metabolic traps in terms of the islands’ sustainable future, both ecologically and socially, and the role of disaster response in driving them to their biophysical limits as islands in the aftermath. | Complex Disasters on the Nicobar Islands | Singh, Simron; Haas, Willi | Book Section | academic | 2016 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Rural
Sub-national
Sustainable production and consumption
Time series
|
| Study of material flows across the territory and counties of Lorraine During the French Environmental Conference in 2013, Circular economy has been identified has a major issue to change the economic model towards a resource optimised management. Better flows understanding is a prior and necessary step to make this transition successful. According to those issues, the DREAL ACAL has produced a Material Flow Analysis (MFA) at regional scale (Lorraine and its counties) with two main goals: Improving flows understanding on those territories and point out solutions and paths towards a circular resource management. Popularize and communicate this knowledge to share it with local actors. L'économie circulaire a été identifiée lors de la Conférence environnementale de 2013 comme un enjeu majeure de la transition vers un modèle économique durable fondé sur une optimisation de l'usage des ressources d'un territoire. La connaissance des flux de matières constitue un préalable nécessaire à la transition vers une économie circulaire. Prenant acte de ces enjeux, la DREAL ACAL a réalisé une analyse de flux de matières à l'échelle du territoire lorrain et de ses départements avec deux objectifs: Améliorer la connaissance des flux de matières sur ces territoires et mettre en évidence des pistes pour l'optimisation de l'usage des ressources. Vulgariser cette connaissance pour la mettre à disposition des acteurs du territoire. | Study of material flows across the territory and counties of ... | Jean Lecroart Margaux Montagnon Jean-Yves Courtonne | Report | reports | 2016 |
Circular Economy
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Sub-national
|
| Material flow analysis for a sustainable resource management in island ecosystems. A case study in Santa Cruz Island (Galapagos) The Galapagos Archipelago (Ecuador) is one of the most well-known natural sites in the world for its unique biodiversity. This sensitive ecosystem is at risk due to a problematic equilibrium between its conservation policy and development demand. To contribute to implementing integrated sustainable resource management in the Galapagos Islands, a material flow analysis (MFA) of Santa Cruz – the island with the highest anthropic pressure in the archipelago – has been performed, outlining a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the direct flow of goods throughout the system. MFA outcomes have been used to evaluate and forecast the impact of some policies and strategies on the local system, focusing in particular on fossil fuel consumption and local agricultural production. This case study stresses the need to introduce a local MFA protocol to decision-makers’ toolbox, as it provides quantitative assessments on a broad spectrum of local development issues. | Material flow analysis for a sustainable resource management in island ... | Cecchin, Andrea | Journal Article | academic | 2016 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Sub-national
|
| Material Flow Accounts and Driving Factors of Economic Growth in the Philippines This study looks into material flow trends in the Philippines from 1985 to 2010 by utilizing the methodology of economy-wide material flow analysis. Using domestic data sources, this study presents disaggregated annual material flow trends in terms of four major material categories, namely: biomass; fossil energy carriers; ores and industrial minerals; and construction minerals. The results describe in detail the growth of material flows in a high-density country at the onset of its development and reveal the shift of material consumption from dominance of renewable materials in 1985 to nonrenewable materials in 2010. IPAT analysis shows that the increase in material consumption was driven by population growth from 1985 to 1998 and by growth in affluence from 1999 to 2010. However, high inequalities amidst the growing economy suggest that a small group of wealthy people have influenced the acceleration of material consumption in the Philippines. The results of this research are intended to provide a thorough analysis of the processes occurring in Philippine economic growth in order to assist in tackling implications for the important issue of sustainable resource management. | Material Flow Accounts and Driving Factors of Economic Growth in ... | Martinico-Perez, Marianne Faith G. and Fishman, Tomer and Okuoka, Keijiro and Tanikawa, Hiroki | Journal Article | academic | 2016 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
|
| Towards more comprehensive urban environmental assessments: exploring the complex relationship between urban and metabolic profiles Urban areas cover 2% of the Earth's land surface, host more than 50% of global population and are estimated to account for around 75% of CO2 emissions from global energy use. In order to mitigate existing and future direct and indirect environmental pressures resulting from urban resource use, it is necessary to investigate and better understand resource and pollution flows associated with urban systems. Current urban environmental assessment methodologies enable the quantification of resource use and pollution emissions flows entering, becoming stocked and exiting urban areas. While these methodologies enable to estimate the environmental effect of cities, they often consider urban areas as being static and homogeneous systems. This partial and simplistic representation shadows the complex spatio-temporal interrelationships between the local context and its associated local and global environmental pressures. This characterisation of urban systems is a significant limitation, not only for the urban environmental assessments, but also for the identification of their drivers as it may lead to inadequate urban environmental policies. To overcome this limitation and effectively reduce glocal urban environmental pressures, it is necessary to better understand the complex functioning of cities and identify their drivers. This research developed a comprehensive urban environmental assessment framework that helps to better explicit and understand the complex relationship between an urban system and its environmental profile in a systemic and systematic way. This framework was applied to the case study of Brussels Capital Region (BCR). Results from the application of this framework show that urban systems are neither static nor homogeneous. In fact, different relationships between the urban and metabolic profiles appear when considering different spatial scales and temporal intervals as well as different urban and metabolic metrics. The establishment of BCR's urban profile showed that components that shape the urban system evolve in an organic way over time. Moreover, the spatial expression of an urban system portrays its heterogeneous aspect and how different metrics of the same urban indicator can reveal distinct facets and challenges for an urban area or a neighbourhood. Finally, it was demonstrated that the relationship between urban indicators is different for each spatial scale and therefore knowledge from one spatial scale is not necessarily transferable from one scale to another. The establishment and analysis of BCR's metabolic profile also underlined the complex functioning of cities as each flow has a different temporal evolution and spatial expression. Due to the multifaceted and intertwined aspect of metabolic flows it becomes clear that no single parameter enables to explain or predict their behaviour. This leads to the conclusion that a great number of questions still need to be considered, understood and answered before effectively and coherently reducing environmental pressures from cities. The developed framework proposes a number of concrete steps that enable existing and new cities to better understand their metabolic functioning and ultimately transition towards less environmentally harmful futures. | Towards more comprehensive urban environmental assessments: exploring the complex relationship ... | Aristide Athanassiadis | Thesis | theses | 2016 |
Belgium
Biomass (must be merged with other Biomass)
Brussels
Carbon
Carbon Monoxide (CO)
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Circular Economy
City
Construction Materials
Domestic extraction (DE)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Electricity
Emissions (must be merged with Emissions)
Energy
Food
Global
Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)
Imports and Exports
Material Stock Analysis (MSA)
Metals
Minerals
Multi-scale
NOx
Natural Gas
SO2
Single point in time
Social Metabolism
Time series
Urban
Waste
Wastewater
Water
Zotero import
|
| Lisbon's womb: an approach to the city metabolism in the turn to the twentieth century The consumption and production of food products in the municipality of Lisbon in the 1890-1900 decade is assessed with the support of historical cartography and statistical resources. For the first time, food production in a municipality in the turn to the twentieth century is accounted and simultaneously subject of a visual analysis of the land used for agriculture and of the water infrastructures that supported such uses. Agriculture occupied at least 40 % of the territory of the city, while the built environment occupied no more than 16 % of the territory. However, local production of food was far from supplying most of the citizens' needs, and substantial food imports were needed. In this context, the municipality behaved like a heterotrophic system, highly dependent on the external supply of resources. Moreover, comparing to other European cities at the time Lisbon was facing in the end of the nineteenth century a late and slow transition from an agrarian social metabolism to an industrial one, suggesting that Lisbon was still relatively high-solar-powered as compared to other European cities at the time that were already highly fossil-fuel-powered. | Lisbon's womb: an approach to the city metabolism in the ... | Niza, Samuel and Ferreira, Daniela and Mourão, Joana and d'Almeida, Patrícia Bento and Marat-Mendes, Teresa | Journal Article | academic | 2016 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Lisbon
Portugal
Time series
Urban
|
| Cape Town's Metabolism: Insights from a Material Flow Analysis This work aims to contribute to the number of urban metabolism case studies using a standardized methodology. An economy-wide material flow analysis (EW-MFA) was conducted on the Metropolitan Municipality of Cape Town (South Africa) for the year 2013, using the Eurostat framework. The study provides insights into the city's metabolism through various indicators including direct material input (DMI), domestic material consumption (DMC), and direct material output (DMO), among others. In order to report on the uncertainty of the data, a set of data quality indicators originating from the life cycle assessment literature was used.The results show that domestic extraction involves significant quantities of non-metallic minerals, and that imports consist primarily of biomass and fossil fuels. The role of the city as a regional hub is also made clear from this study and illustrated by large quantities of food and other materials flowing through the city on their way to or from international markets. The results are compared with indicators from other cities and with previous metabolism work done on Cape Town.To fully grasp the impacts of the city's metabolism, more work needs to be done. It will be necessary to understand the upstream impact of local consumption, and consumption patterns should be differentiated on a more nuanced level (taking into account large differences between household income levels as well as separating the metabolism of industry and commerce from residential consumption). | Cape Town's Metabolism: Insights from a Material Flow Analysis | Hoekman, Paul and von Blottnitz, Harro | Journal Article | academic | 2016 |
Case Study
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
UM review paper import
Urban
|
| Material Flow Analysis in Quebec: Methods and operationalising challenges in a circular economy perspective | Material Flow Analysis in Quebec: Methods and operationalising challenges in ... | Audrey Morris | Thesis | theses | 2016 |
Circular Economy
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Urban
|
| Material Flow Analysis as a Decision Support Tool for Waste Management: A Literature Review This article reviews, categorizes, and evaluates the objectives, means, and results of the application of material flow analysis (MFA) in waste management. It identifies those areas where MFA methodologies are most successful in supporting waste management decisions. The focus of this review is on the distinction between MFA on the level of goods and on the level of substances. Based on 83 reviewed studies, potentials, strengths, and weaknesses are investigated for the two levels of MFA when applied for analysis, evaluation, and improvement of waste management systems. The differences are discussed in view of effectiveness, applicability, and data availability. The results show that MFA on the level of goods are instrumental for understanding how waste management systems function, facilitating the connections of stakeholders, authorities, and waste management companies. The substance level is essential to assess qualitative aspects regarding resources and environment. Knowledge about the transformation, transport, and storage of valuable and hazardous substances forms the base for identifying both resource potentials and risks for human health and the environment. The results of this review encourage the application of MFA on both levels of goods and substances for decision making in waste management. Because of the mass balance principle, this combination has proven to be a powerful tool for comprehensively assessing if a chosen system reaches designated waste management goals. | Material Flow Analysis as a Decision Support Tool for Waste ... | Allesch, Astrid and Brunner, Paul H | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Review Paper
Waste
Zotero import
|
| The Spanish Transition to Industrial Metabolism: Long-Term Material Flow Analysis (1860-2010) The aim of this work is to reconstruct the main economy-wide/material flow accounting indicators for the Spanish economy between 1860 and 2010. The main results indicate that from 1960 onward, the country saw a very rapid industrial transition based on the domestic extraction of quarry products and the import of fossil fuels and manufactured goods. Direct material consumption rose from 58.7 million tonnes (Mt) in 1860 to 570.2 Mt in 2010. In per capita terms, it rose from 2.76 tonnes per capita per year (t/cap/yr) to 11.61 t/cap/year. Of the decennial years studied in this article, a peak of 15.23 t/cap/yr occurs in the year 2000; the subsequent fall is explained by the crisis of 2008. Until 1930, Spain was a net exporter of resources, but since that year, and especially since 1960, it began to depend heavily on overseas resources. The physical trade balance per inhabitant in Spain was -0.01 t/cap/year in 1860 and today it is 2.45 t/cap/year. This process also reveals the change in consumption patterns, which became increasingly dependent on abiotic resources. In 1860, 98.1% of resources consumed was biomass, whereas today the figure is 16.2%. In all events, this article shows how, although the great transformation did not occur until 1960, before that date the country saw significant qualitative transformation, which did not involve relevant changes in the mobilization of resources. | The Spanish Transition to Industrial Metabolism: Long-Term Material Flow Analysis ... | Infante-Amate, Juan and Soto, David and Aguilera, Eduardo and García-Ruiz, Roberto and Guzmán, Gloria and Cid, Antonio and González de Molina, Manuel | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Spain
Time series
Transportation
|
| Maintenance and Expansion: Modeling Material Stocks and Flows for Residential Buildings and Transportation Networks in the EU25 Material stocks are an important part of the social metabolism. Owing to long service lifetimes of stocks, they not only shape resource flows during construction, but also during use, maintenance, and at the end of their useful lifetime. This makes them an important topic for sustainable development.In this work, a model of stocks and flows for nonmetallic minerals in residential buildings, roads, and railways in the EU25, from 2004 to 2009 is presented. The changing material composition of the stock is modeled using a typology of 72 residential buildings, four road and two railway types, throughout the EU25. This allows for estimating the amounts of materials in in-use stocks of residential buildings and transportation networks, as well as input and output flows. We compare the magnitude of material demands for expansion versus those for maintenance of existing stock. Then, recycling potentials are quantitatively explored by comparing the magnitude of estimated input, waste, and recycling flows from 2004 to 2009 and in a business-as-usual scenario for 2020. Thereby, we assess the potential impacts of the European Waste Framework Directive, which strives for a significant increase in recycling.We find that in the EU25, consisting of highly industrialized countries, a large share of material inputs are directed at maintaining existing stocks. Proper management of existing transportation networks and residential buildings is therefore crucial for the future size of flows of nonmetallic minerals. | Maintenance and Expansion: Modeling Material Stocks and Flows for Residential ... | Wiedenhofer, Dominik and Steinberger, Julia K. and Eisenmenger, Nina and Haas, Willi | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Case Study
Construction Materials
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Europe
Time series
Transportation
Zotero import
|
| Urban Economies Resource Productivity and Decoupling: Metabolism Trends of 1996--2011 in Sweden, Stockholm, and Gothenburg Resource productivity and evidence of economic decoupling were investigated on the basis of the time series in 1996-2011 of material flow analysis for Sweden, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. In the three cases, absolute reductions in CO2 emissions by about 20% were observed, energy consumption per capita decreased, while gross domestic product (GDP) per capita grew. The energy consumption of the residential and public sectors decreased drastically, while the transport energy consumption is still growing steadily. Decoupling of the economy as a whole (i.e., including materials) is not yet happening at any scale. The domestic material consumption (DMC) continues to increase, in parallel with the GDP. The rate of increase for DMC is slower than that for GDP in both Stockholm and Sweden as a whole (i.e., relative decoupling). The metabolism of the cities does not replicate the national metabolism, and the two cities each have their own distinct metabolism profiles. As a consequence, policy implications for each of the case studies were suggested. In general, because of the necessarily different roles of the two cities in the national economy, generic resource productivity benchmarks, such as CO2 per capita, should be avoided in favor of sectorial benchmarks, such as industry, transport, or residential CO2 per capita. In addition, the share of the city impacts caused by the provision of a service for the rest of the country, such as a port, could be allocated to the national economy. | Urban Economies Resource Productivity and Decoupling: Metabolism Trends of 1996--2011 ... | Kalmykova, Yuliya and Rosado, Leonardo and Patrício, João | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Case Study
Decoupling
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Gothenburg
National
Stockholm
Sweden
Time series
Urban
|
| Material flow analysis applied to rare earth elements in Europe This paper explores flows and stocks, at the scale of the European Union, of certain rare earth elements (REEs; Pr, Nd, Eu, Tb, Dy and Y) which are associated with products that are important for the decarbonisation of the energy sector and that also have strong recycling potential. Material flow analyses were performed considering the various steps along the value chain (separation of rare earth oxides, manufacture of products, etc.) and including the lithosphere as a potential stock (potential geological resources). Results provide estimates of flows of rare earths into use, in-use stocks and waste streams. Flows into use of, e.g., Tb in fluorescent lamp phosphors, Nd and Dy in permanent magnets and Nd in battery applications were estimated, for selected reference year 2010, as 35, 1230, 230 and 120 tons respectively. The proposed Sankey diagrams illustrate the strong imbalance of flows of permanent magnet REEs along the value chain, with Europe relying largely on the import of finished products (magnets and applications). It is estimated that around 2020, the amounts of Tb in fluorescent lamps and Nd in permanent magnets recycled each year in Europe, could be on the order of 10 tons for Tb and between 170 and 230 tons for Nd. | Material flow analysis applied to rare earth elements in Europe | Guyonnet, Dominique and Planchon, Mariane and Rollat, Alain and Escalon, Victoire and Tuduri, Johann and Charles, Nicolas and Vaxelaire, Stéphane and Dubois, Didier and Fargier, Hélène | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
|
| Understanding Urban Metabolism: A Tool for Urban Planning About the Book 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. Table of Contents Part 1: Introduction 1. Urban Metabolism 2. Decision Support Tools for Urban Planning 3. The BRIDGE Approach Part 2: Measurements and Modelling of Physical Flows 4. Physical Fluxes in the Urban Environment 5. Environmental Measurements in BRIDGE Case Studies 6. Use of Earth Observation to support Urban Modelling Parameterization in BRIDGE 7. Meso-scale Meteorological Models in the Urban Context 8. Urban Air Quality Models 9. Urban Energy Budget Models 10. Urban Water Balance and Hydrology Models 11. Urban Carbon Budget Modelling Part 3: The Socioeconomic Components 12. The Use of Communities of Practice to Involve Stakeholders in the DSS Design 13. Collection of Socioeconomic Data and Indicators for Urban Integrated Modelling 14. Combining Environmental and Socioeconomic Data Part 4: The BRIDGE DSS 15. The BRIDGE Impact Assessment Framework 16. The BRIDGE DSS 17. Decision Making under Certainty: Use of Foresight for Assessing Planning Alternatives 18. Guidelines for Urban Sustainable Development Part 5: Conclusions 19. Conclusions | Understanding Urban Metabolism: A Tool for Urban Planning | Chrysoulakis, N. and Castro, E. A. and Moors, E. J. | Book | academic | 2015 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Urban
|
| Metabolism of Brussels-Capital Region: identification of flows, economic actors and activities on the territory and tracks of reflection for resource optimisation This book on the metabolism of the Brussels-Capital Region presents, on the basis of foreign experience, a report on material and energy flows at the level of the Brussels-Capital Region for the year 2011 as well as concrete improvements on certain value chains in a circular economy perspective. It also opens perspectives for the development of the regional program in circular economy initiated by the Brussels government in terms of operational, regulatory, economic and socio-economic plans. In more practical terms, the content includes: · a bibliographic analysis which makes it possible to situate the construction of Brussels' circular economy policy in relation to other neighboring and non-neighboring territories; · A regional metabolic assessment offering a new way of approaching materials, energy and water on the territory, linking the incoming, stored and outgoing flows of the territory. The assessment also constitutes a tool base for monitoring the effectiveness of resource use in the territory; · An assessment and the definition of actions for the improvement of flows selected by Brussels Envionnement and their value chains for new projects or studies to be driven by Brussels actors; · The rendering of the participatory dynamic that has allowed to start a reflection and definition of intentions regarding the development of the circular economy on a Brussels scale. The present study thus constitutes a new starting point in the work of optimizing flows of materials, water and energy in the Brussels regional territory in a circular economy perspective based on a theoretical basis related to concrete applications. who want to be as realistic as they are practical. Cet ouvrage sur le métabolisme de la Région Bruxelles-Capitale présente, sur base d’expériences étrangères, un bilan de flux de matières et d’énergie à l’échelle de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale pour l’année 2011 ainsi que des pistes d’amélioration concrètes sur certaines chaînes de valeur dans une perspective d’économie circulaire. Il ouvre également des perspectives de développement du programme régional en économie circulaire initiée par le gouvernement bruxellois sur les plans opérationnels, réglementaires, économiques que socio-économiques. En termes plus pratiques, le contenu reprend: · une analyse bibliographique qui permet de situer la construction de la politique d’économie circulaire de Bruxelles en regard d’autres territoires voisins et non-voisins; · un bilan métabolique régional offrant une nouvelle manière d’aborder les matières, l’énergie et l’eau sur le territoire, car mettant en lien les flux entrants, stockés et sortants du territoire. Le bilan constitue aussi une base d’outil pour le suivi de l’efficacité d’utilisation des ressources sur le territoire; · une évaluation et la définition d’actions pour l’amélioration de flux sélectionnés par Bruxelles Envionnement et leurs chaînes de valeurs pour de nouveaux projet ou études à impulser par les acteurs bruxellois; · le rendu de la dynamique participative qui a permis de démarrer une réflexion et définition d’intentions quant au développement de l’économie circulaire à l’échelle de Bruxelles . La présente étude constitue donc un nouveau point de départ dans le travail d’optimisation des flux de matières, eau et énergie sur le territoire régional bruxellois dans une perspective d’économie circulaire en s’appuyant sur une base théorique en lien avec des applications concrètes qui se veulent aussi réalistes que pratiques. | Metabolism of Brussels-Capital Region: identification of flows, economic actors and ... | Bruxelles Environnement and BATir and EcoRes and ICEDD | Report | reports | 2015 |
Case Study
Circular Economy
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Material Flow Analysis (MFA)
Review Paper
Single point in time
Urban
|
| Socioeconomic Metabolism of the Balearic Islands, 1996-2010 | Socioeconomic Metabolism of the Balearic Islands, 1996-2010 | Ginard, X; Murray, I. | Book Section | academic | 2015 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Sub-national
|
| Formal and Informal Waste Management: Limitations and Potentialities of Recycling in the Galapagos Islands The metabolism of urban systems produces waste that generates a negative impact on the environment. This dynamic is even more problematic in contexts of high ecological value such as Galapagos, where poor waste management can irreversibly compromise the ecosystem. This research work develops a material flow analysis in Santa Cruz - the most anthropized island of the Galapagos - particularly deepening the formal and informal waste flows in the local system. The study highlights a complex scheme of exchange of materials, where the public and private waste management system integrates informal practices that often strengthen the overall efficiency of the system. The analysis also suggests strategies and actions to improve recycling mechanisms on the island, in addition to proposing to replicate this type of study in diverse contexts, as it is a useful tool to optimize the use of resources at the local level and reduce the environmental impact. El metabolismo de los sistemas urbanos produce residuos que generan un impacto negativo sobre el medio ambiente. Esta dinámica es incluso más problemática en contextos de alto valor ecológico como Galápagos, donde una mala gestión de los residuos puede comprometer irreversiblemente el ecosistema. El presente trabajo de investigación desarrolla un análisis de flujo de materiales en Santa Cruz – la isla más antropizada de Galápagos – profundizando particularmente en los flujos formales e informales de residuos en el sistema local. El estudio pone en evidencia un esquema complejo de intercambio de materiales, donde el sistema público y privado de gestión de residuos integra prácticas informales que a menudo fortalecen la eficiencia general del sistema. El análisis también sugiere estrategias y acciones para mejorar los mecanismos de reciclo en la isla, además de proponer replicar este tipo de estudio en contextos diversos, en cuanto es una herramienta útil para optimizar el uso de recurso a nivel local y reducir el impacto ambiental. | Formal and Informal Waste Management: Limitations and Potentialities of Recycling ... | Cecchin, A. | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Circular Economy
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Sub-national
|
| Combined MFA and LCA approach to evaluate the metabolism of service polygons: A case study on a university campus Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are widely employed in the study of topics related to industrial ecology. However, unlike this study, they are normally used separately rather than jointly. Educational institutions are among the most deeply rooted services in society, producing knowledge, research and culture. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the region of Catalonia, Spain, to evaluate the metabolism of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) based on a combined MFA and LCA approach on two levels: macro-level analysis using MFA, and micro-level analysis using LCA. The MFA results indicated that energy consumption represents more than 50.00% of all inputs, and its associated indirect flows are highly relevant for UAB's overall metabolism, accounting for 69.30% of all energy inputs. As for the LCA results, the ReCiPe2008 method was adopted and 92.00% of all normalized impacts were related to the category of Climate Change Potential (CCP), also attributed mainly to energy consumption. Thus, both MFA and LCA methodologies indicated energy consumption is the main hotspot. The results of MFA indicators, energy and water flows were compared with earlier literature, revealing a clear tendency for industrial areas in Catalonia to show higher results than service polygons, as an effect of population density. Finally, the newly erected building of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and the Catalan Institute of Paleontology (ICTA-ICP) is described as an innovative alternative to promote environmental sustainability at universities that focus on energy and water conservation and CCP impacts reduction. | Combined MFA and LCA approach to evaluate the metabolism of ... | Lopes Silva, Diogo Aparecido; de Oliveira, José Augusto; Saavedra, Yovana M.B.; Ometto, Aldo Roberto; Rieradevall i Pons, Joan; Gabarrell Durany, Xavier | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Barcelona
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Emissions (must be merged with Emissions)
Energy
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Research and Analysis
Single point in time
Spain
Water
|
| Towards Urban Resource Flow Estimates in Data Scarce Environments: The Case of African Cities Data sourcing challenges in African nations have led many African urban infrastructure developments to be implemented with minimal scientific backing to support their success. In some cases this may directly impact a city ' s ability to reach service delivery, economic growth and human development goals , let alone the city's ability to protect ecosystem services upon which it relies. As an attempt to fill this gap, this paper describes an exploratory process used to determine city - level demographic, economic and resource flow data for African nations. The approach makes use of scaling and clustering techniques to form acceptable and utilizable representations of selected African cities. Variables that may serve as the strongest predictors for resource consumption i n- tensity in African nations and cities were explored, in particular, the aspects of the Koppen Cl i- mate Zones, estimates of average urban income and GDP, and the influence of urban primacy. It is expected that the approach examined will provide a step towards estimating and understanding African cities and their resource profiles. | Towards Urban Resource Flow Estimates in Data Scarce Environments: The ... | Currie, Paul and Lay-Sleeper, Ethan and Fernandez, John E and Kim, Jenny and Musango, Josephine Kaviti | Journal Article | academic | 2015 |
Data Quality
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Urban
|
| Urban-Scale Material Flow Analysis in a South African Context: A Cape Town Feasibility Study Urban-scale Material Flow Analyses (MFAs) in the global south provide unique challenges compared to national MFAs and to urban MFAs in the north. In order to determine the feasibility of undertaking an urban-scale MFA in the global south, this dissertation sets out to undertake an MFA on Cape Town, and thoroughly analyze the data collection process, document the challenges, and interpret data quantity and quality. Data were found for nearly all flows defined in the Eurostat methodology, but only for the most recent of three consecutive years under study. Data quality is challenged by high variance in reliability of sources, difficulty in obtaining documents, additional work required to process the data, lack of data on informal or illegal flows, and the scattered distribution of sources. Data collection took 345 hours during a period of 22 and involved interaction with a total of 325 contacts and 86 documents. The principal activities were related to contacting and interacting with people. Most time was spent on e-mailing and meeting people, and significant time was furthermore spent on transportation to and from meetings. Not all time was spent effectively and efficiently. Chasing unreliable data and unproductive cross-checking were the principal culprits. Despite the challenges, the quantity and quality of data are of a sufficient level to provide interesting insights into the urban metabolism for Cape Town, and undertaking this kind of urban-scale MFA is thus deemed feasible. Once a time-consuming, initial MFA has identified valuable and reliable sources, periodic repetition should be relatively uncomplicated. Through government involvement or industry cooperation, data collection and data sharing with a few key stakeholders can make regular urban MFA reporting a feasible reality. This work shows who those key stakeholders are and how researchers and government can undertake and improve future urban MFA studies - not only on Cape Town but also on other regions and cities in South Africa. | Urban-Scale Material Flow Analysis in a South African Context: A ... | Paul Hoekman | Thesis | theses | 2015 |
Cape Town
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
South Africa
Urban
|
| Patterns of change in material use and material efficiency in the successor states of the former Soviet Union The successor states of the former Soviet Union present a unique opportunity to study the changes in the socio-metabolic profile of a cohort of nations which underwent a radical and contemporaneous shift in economic system. That change was from being regions within an economically integrated, centrally planned whole, to being independent nations left to find their own place in the global economic system. The situation of these nations since the dissolution of the Soviet Union provides a rare experiment, in which we might observe the influence of the different starting conditions of each nation on the development path it subsequently followed, and the attendant socio-metabolic profiles which resulted. Here we take the opportunity to examine patterns for the region as a whole, and for three individual countries. We also examine the relative importance of three different drivers of material consumption using a version of the IPAT framework. Finally, an area for follow-on investigation was suggested by a significant positive correlation observed between the economic growth of individual successor states, and the degree to which they improved their material productivity. This latter is of potential importance in assessing whether dematerialization acts primarily to accelerate or retard economic growth. | Patterns of change in material use and material efficiency in ... | Schandl, Heinz and West, James and Krausmann, Fridolin and Kovanda, Jan and Hak, Tomas | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Sub-national
Time series
|
| Spatial allocation of material flow analysis in residential developments: a case study of Kildare County, Ireland Studies of urban metabolism provide important insights for environmental management of cities, but are not widely used in planning practice due to a mismatch of data scale and coverage. This paper introduces the Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA) model as a potential decision support tool aimed as a contribution to overcome some of these difficulties and describes its pilot use at the county level in the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest that SAMFA is capable of identifying hotspots of higher material and energy use to support targeted planning initiatives, while its ability to visualise different policy scenarios supports more effective multi-stakeholder engagement. The paper evaluates this pilot use and sets out how this model can act as an analytical platform for the industrial ecology-spatial planning nexus. | Spatial allocation of material flow analysis in residential developments: a ... | Roy, Manoj and Curry, Robin and Ellis, Geraint | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Urban
Zotero import
Zotero2
|
| Consumption-based Material Flow Accounting In 2007, imports accounted for approximately 34% of the material input (domestic extraction and imports) into the Austrian economy and almost 60% of the GDP stemmed from exports. Upstream material inputs into the production of traded goods, however, are not yet included in the standard framework of material flow accounting (MFA). We have reviewed different approaches accounting for these upstream material inputs, or raw material equivalents (RME), positioning them in a wider debate about consumption-based perspectives in environmental accounting. For the period 1995-2007, we calculated annual RME of Austria's trade and consumption applying a hybrid approach. For exports and competitive imports, we used an environmentally extended input-output model of the Austrian economy, based on annual supply and use tables and MFA data. For noncompetitive imports, coefficients for upstream material inputs were extracted from life cycle inventories. The RME of Austria's imports and exports were approximately three times larger than the trade flows themselves. In 2007, Austria's raw material consumption was 30 million tonnes or 15% higher than its domestic material consumption. We discuss the material composition of these flows and their temporal dynamics. Our results demonstrate the need for a consumption-based perspective in MFA to provide robust indicators for dematerialization and resource efficiency analysis of open economies. | Consumption-based Material Flow Accounting | Schaffartzik, Anke and Eisenmenger, Nina and Krausmann, Fridolin and Weisz, Helga | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Austria
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Raw Materials Equivalent (RME)
Time series
Zotero import
|
| 2008-2012 economy-wide material flow account (Belgium) No abstract available. | 2008-2012 economy-wide material flow account (Belgium) | Guy Vandille | Report | reports | 2014 |
Belgium
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Time series
|
| Global patterns of material flows and their socio-economic and environmental implications: a MFA study on all countries world-wide from 1980 to 2009 This paper assesses world-wide patterns of material extraction, trade, consumption and productivity based on a new data set for economy-wide material flows, covering used materials for all countries world-wide between 1980 and 2009. We show that global material extraction has grown by more than 90% over the past 30 years and is reaching almost 70 billion tonnes today. Also, trade volumes in physical terms have increased by a factor of 2.5 over the past 30 years, and in 2009, 9.3 billion tonnes of raw materials and products were traded around the globe. China has turned into the biggest consumer of materials world-wide and together with the US, India, Brazil and Russia, consumes more than 50% of all globally extracted materials. We also show that the per-capita consumption levels are very uneven, with a factor of more than 60 between the country with the lowest and highest consumption in 2009. On average, each human being consumed 10 tonnes of materials in 2009, 2 tonnes more than in 1980. We discuss whether decoupling of economies’ growth from resource use has occurred and analyse interrelations of material use with human development. Finally, we elaborate on key environmental problems related to various material groups. | Global patterns of material flows and their socio-economic and environmental ... | Giljum, Stefan and Dittrich, Monika and Lieber, Mirko and Lutter, Stephan | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Comparison
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Time series
|
| Island Waste Management Systems: Statistics, Challenges, and Opportunities for Applied Industrial Ecology Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy costs, large seasonal fluctuations in waste volumes, and complex social and political dynamics that stem from their often closely knit societies. These and other factors can discourage typical waste management practices, but they also provide opportunities for island governments and businesses to explore alternative technologies and policies that suit their particular circumstances and that might be environmentally preferable. This critical review discusses the waste management literature on islands to date, including several industrial ecology (IE) studies. Common advantages and disadvantages faced by island waste management challenges are presented from the perspectives of business and municipal management. Waste generation data are presented from more than 40 islands around the world and tested for correlation with economic and geographic parameters and using cluster analysis, with the aim of identifying trends among island types. Poor data quality and comparability are ongoing challenges that underscore the potential benefits of a consistent program of island waste management data collection. Finally, the review explores opportunities for applying IE research to generate useful insights and policies in the areas of material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment, and social ecology. | Island Waste Management Systems: Statistics, Challenges, and Opportunities for Applied ... | Eckelman, M. J; Ashton, W; Arakaki, Y; Hanaki, K; Nagashima, S; Malone-Lee, L. C. | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Industrial Symbiosis
Island
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
|
| Material Flow Analysis (MFA) for Liveable Cities Well-functioning 'liveable' cities should be sustainable and their consumption of natural resources and production of waste must fit within the capacities of the local, regional and global ecosystems. It is increasingly becoming suggested that an Urban Metabolism (UM), approach could help city decision-makers (e.g. planners) take account of numerous critical influencing factors related to the inward outward flow(s) of natural resources (e.g. food, water and energy) and accumulation of waste. The paper identifies the precursory step for any UM study (Mass Flow Analysis - MFA) and applies it to a case study (Birmingham, UK) in order to show how it could contribute to the measurement, assessment and understanding of liveability, defined as 80% reduction in carbon (from 1990 levels); resource secure (an ethos of One planet living); with maintained or enhanced wellbeing. By provided focus upon an individual resource stream (i.e. water) at multiple scales (city to individual) it is shown that MFA can be used as a starting point to develop realistic and radical engineering solutions. However further work is required for it to be truly reflective of broader aspects of urban liveability. Conference: Proceedings of the 4th World Sustain. ForumAt: SwitzerlandVolume: Sciforum Electronic Conference Series, Volume 4 | Material Flow Analysis (MFA) for Liveable Cities | Dexter V.L. Hunt; Joanne M. Leach; Susan E. Lee, Chris Bouch, Peter Braithwaite, Christopher D.F. Rogers | Conference Paper | None | 2014 |
Birmingham
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
|
| Island Waste Management Systems Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy costs, large seasonal fluctuations in waste volumes, and complex social and political dynamics that stem from their often closely knit societies. These and other factors can discourage typical waste management practices, but they also provide opportunities for island governments and businesses to explore alternative technologies and policies that suit their particular circumstances and that might be environmentally preferable. This critical review discusses the waste management literature on islands to date, including several industrial ecology (IE) studies. Common advantages and disadvantages faced by island waste management challenges are presented from the perspectives of business and municipal management. Waste generation data are presented from more than 40 islands around the world and tested for correlation with economic and geographic parameters and using cluster analysis, with the aim of identifying trends among island types. Poor data quality and comparability are ongoing challenges that underscore the potential benefits of a consistent program of island waste management data collection. Finally, the review explores opportunities for applying IE research to generate useful insights and policies in the areas of material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment, and social ecology. | Island Waste Management Systems | Eckelman, Matthew J and Ashton, Weslynne and Arakaki, Yuji and Hanaki, Keisuke and Nagashima, Shunsuke and Malone-Lee, Lai Choo | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Single point in time
|
| The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global material flows, 1950--2010 Since the World War II, many economies have transitioned from an agrarian, biomass-based to an industrial, minerals-based metabolic regime. Since 1950, world population grew by factor 2.7 and global material consumption by factor 3.7-71 Gigatonnes per year in 2010. The expansion of the resource base required by human societies is associated with growing pressure on the environment and infringement on the habitats of other species. In order to achieve a sustainability transition, we require a better understanding of the currently ongoing metabolic transition and its potential inertia. In this article, we present a long-term global material flow dataset covering material extraction, trade, and consumption of 177 individual countries between 1950 and 2010. We trace patterns and trends in material flows for six major geographic and economic country groupings and world regions (Western Industrial, the (Former) Soviet Union and its allies, Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa) as well as their contribution to the emergence of a global metabolic profile during a period of rapid industrialization and globalization. Global average material use increased from 5.0 to 10.3 tons per capita and year (t/cap/a) between 1950 and 2010. Regional metabolic rates range from 4.5 t/cap/a in Sub-Saharan Africa to 14.8 t/cap/a in the Western Industrial grouping. While we can observe a stabilization of the industrial metabolic profile composed of relatively equal shares of biomass, fossil energy carriers, and construction minerals, we note differences in the degree to which other regions are gravitating toward a similar form of material use. Since 2000, Asia has overtaken the Western Industrial grouping in terms of its share in global resource use although not in terms of its per capita material consumption. We find that at a sub-global level, the roles of the world regions have changed. There are, however, no signs yet that this will lead to stabilization or even a reduction of global resource use. | The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global ... | Schaffartzik, Anke and Mayer, Andreas and Gingrich, Simone and Eisenmenger, Nina and Loy, Christian and Krausmann, Fridolin | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Sub-national
Time series
|
| Incorporating Bio-Physical Sciences into a Decision Support Tool for Sustainable Urban Planning Deciding upon optimum planning actions in terms of sustainable urban planning involves the consideration of multiple environmental and socio-economic criteria. The transformation of natural landscapes to urban areas affects energy and material fluxes. An important aspect of the urban environment is the urban metabolism, and changes in such metabolism need to be considered for sustainable planning decisions. A spatial Decision Support System (DSS) prototyped within the European FP7-funded project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism), enables accounting for the urban metabolism of planning actions, by exploiting the current knowledge and technology of biophysical sciences. The main aim of the BRIDGE project was to bridge the knowledge and communication gap between urban planners and environmental scientists and to illustrate the advantages of considering detailed environmental information in urban planning processes. The developed DSS prototype integrates biophysical observations and simulation techniques with socio-economic aspects in five European cities, selected as case studies for the pilot application of the tool. This paper describes the design and implementation of the BRIDGE DSS prototype, illustrates some examples of use, and highlights the need for further research and development in the field. | Incorporating Bio-Physical Sciences into a Decision Support Tool for Sustainable ... | Mitraka, Z. and Diamantakis, E. and Chrysoulakis, N. and Castro, E. A. and San Jose, R. and Gonzalez, A. and Blecic, I | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Policy
Urban
|
| Concepts and methodologies for measuring the sustainability of cities In recent decades, better data and methods have become available for understanding the complex functioning of cities and their impacts on sustainability. This review synthesizes the recent developments in concepts and methods being used to measure the impacts of cities on environmental sustainability. It differentiates between a dominant trend in research literature that concentrates on the accounting and allocation of greenhouse gas emissions and energy use to cities and a reemergence of studies that focus on the direct and indirect material and resource flows in cities. The methodological approaches reviewed may consider cities as either producers or consumers, and all recognize that urban environmental impacts can be local, regional, or global. As well as giving an overview of the methodological debates, we examine the implications of the different approaches for policy and the challenges these approaches face in their application in the field. | Concepts and methodologies for measuring the sustainability of cities | Yetano Roche, María and Lechtenböhmer, Stefan and Fischedick, Manfred and Gröne, Marie-Christine and Xia, Chun and Dienst, Carmen | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Urban
Zotero import
|
| Comptes des flux de matières à l'échelle de l'économie 2008-2012 | Comptes des flux de matières à l'échelle de l'économie 2008-2012 | Guy Vandille | Report | reports | 2014 |
Belgium
Domestic extraction (DE)
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Imports and Exports
National
Time series
|
| Analysis of Egyptian Cities towards Sustainable Urban Metabolism With the rapidly growing population and rapidly depleting resources, environmental alteration and urbanization are now being explored as a catalyst for achieving sustainable development. Egypt as one of the highly urbanized developing countries in the African region is trapped with inefficient use of resources especially in urban centers. In the face of these environmental concerns and high density population; cities are increasingly getting overwhelmed by social, economical, ecological, and urban challenges that need to be considered within the dilemma of sustainable urban development and urban growth in developing countries. Moreover, the increased urbanization of urban centers combined with intense energy demands of developing economies with resource consumption; has driven recognition that the study of urban metabolism is central to achieve sustainable development. Cities now consume resources and produce wastes in amounts that are incommensurate with the populations they contain. So, quantifying the environmental impacts of cities is essential if urbanization of the world‟s growing population is to occur sustainably. Also, an integrated understanding of the urban system of new cities and its sustainability synergies is a must in the unprecedented era of urbanization. The concept of urban metabolism and how it is related to urban sustainability isn‟t new in the field of sustainable urban development. However, based on the current research literature published under this umbrella, there is an application gap of urban metabolism analysis in the Middle East region. In this sense, this paper aims at introducing urban metabolism assessment based on material flow analysis (MFA) to provide a more solid understanding of how new Egyptian cities currently work. For the realization of the different strategies and options for sustainable cities in Egypt, a huge amount of material and non-material resources and management should be utilized. Therefore, the development scenarios have to be comprehensively and carefully studied with regards to the criteria for sustainable urban development. Accordingly, the paper will investigate the urban metabolism assessment through material flow accounting to two metropolitan cities in Egypt to estimate current material and energy intensities in relation to densities and how it can affect the future development of these cities towards sustainable urbanization. With this analysis the paper will provide a potential ground for decision making process for highly dense urban centers and introduce current urban consumption patterns for cities in developing regions. Conference: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies, v2. | Analysis of Egyptian Cities towards Sustainable Urban Metabolism | Nourhan Magdy | Conference Paper | None | 2014 |
Biomass (must be merged with other Biomass)
Cairo
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Construction Materials
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Egypt
Electricity
Emissions (must be merged with Emissions)
Fossil Fuels
Giza
Indicators - general
Minerals
Research and Analysis
Urban
Waste
Water
|
| Resource Use in Small Island States: Material Flows in Iceland and Trinidad and Tobago, 1961-2008 Iceland and Trinidad and Tobago are small open, high‐income island economies with very specific resource‐use patterns. This article presents a material flow analysis (MFA) for the two countries covering a time period of nearly five decades. Both countries have a narrow domestic resource base, their economy being largely based on the exploitation of one or two key resources for export production. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, the physical economy is dominated by oil and natural gas extraction and petrochemical industries, whereas Iceland's economy for centuries has been based on fisheries. More recently, abundant hydropower and geothermal heat were the basis for the establishment of large export‐oriented metal processing industries, which fully depend on imported raw materials and make use of domestic renewable electricity. Both countries are highly dependent on these natural resources and vulnerable to overexploitation and price developments. We show how the export‐oriented industries lead to high and growing levels of per capita material and energy use and carbon dioxide emissions resulting from large amounts of processing wastes and energy consumption in production processes. The example of small open economies with an industrial production system focused on few, but abundant, key resources and of comparatively low complexity provides interesting insights of how resource endowment paired with availability or absence of infrastructure and specific institutional arrangements drives domestic resource‐use patterns. This also contributes to a better understanding and interpretation of MFA indicators, such as domestic material consumption. | Resource Use in Small Island States: Material Flows in Iceland ... | Krausmann, Fridolin and Richter, Regina and Eisenmenger, Nina | Journal Article | academic | 2014 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Iceland
Island
National
Time series
Trinidad and Tobago
|
| Mapping the global flow of aluminum: From liquid aluminum to end-use goods Demand for aluminum in final products has increased 30-fold since 1950 to 45 million tonnes per year, with forecasts predicting this exceptional growth to continue so that demand will reach 2-3 times today's levels by 2050. Aluminum production uses 3.5% of global electricity and causes 1% of global CO2 emissions, while meeting a 50% cut in emissions by 2050 against growing demand would require at least a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions per tonne of aluminum produced—a challenging prospect. In this paper we trace the global flows of aluminum from liquid metal to final products, revealing for the first time a complete map of the aluminum system and providing a basis for future study of the emissions abatement potential of material efficiency. The resulting Sankey diagram also draws attention to two key issues. First, around half of all liquid aluminum (∼39 Mt) produced each year never reaches a final product, and a detailed discussion of these high yield losses shows significant opportunities for improvement. Second, aluminum recycling, which avoids the high energy costs and emissions of electrolysis, requires signification 'dilution' (∼ 8 Mt) and 'cascade' (∼ 6 Mt) flows of higher aluminum grades to make up for the shortfall in scrap supply and to obtain the desired alloy mix, increasing the energy required for recycling. | Mapping the global flow of aluminum: From liquid aluminum to ... | Cullen, Jonathan M and Allwood, Julian M | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Metals
|
| Development and dematerialization: An international study Economic development and growth depend on growing levels of resource use, and result in environmental impacts from large scale resource extraction and emissions of waste. In this study, we examine the resource dependency of economic activities over the past several decades for a set of countries comprising developing, emerging and mature industrialized economies. Rather than a single universal industrial development pathway, we find a diversity of economic dependencies on material use, made evident through cluster analysis. We conduct tests for relative and absolute decoupling of the economy from material use, and compare these with similar tests for decoupling from carbon emissions, both for single countries and country groupings using panel analysis. We show that, over the longer term, emerging and developing countries tend to have significantly larger material-economic coupling than mature industrialized economies (although this effect may be enhanced by trade patterns), but that the contrary is true for short-term coupling. Moreover, we demonstrate that absolute dematerialization limits economic growth rates, while the successful industrialization of developing countries inevitably requires a strong material component. Alternative development priorities are thus urgently needed both for mature and emerging economies: reducing absolute consumption levels for the former, and avoiding the trap of resource-intensive economic and human development for the latter. | Development and dematerialization: An international study | Steinberger, Julia K and Krausmann, Fridolin and Getzner, Michael and Schandl, Heinz and West, Jim | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Case Study
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| The physical structure of urban economies — Comparative assessment [Report] The metabolism of a city is dependent on anthropogenic and natural physical inputs of energy and materials, processes for transforming those inputs for urban activities, additions to the stocks contained within its spatial boundaries, and the waste and emissions handling . The main purpose of this work consists on further developing methods that allow identifying the material consumption of activity sectors within a city . The method presented in this article allow s the use of internationally available data (e.g. OECD Input Output matrices) , which enables analysing a large range of urban areas . The method is applied to metropolitan economies in Europe (Lisbon and Paris) and Asia (Seoul - Incheon and Shanghai), and the variability of the physical structure of these economies is assessed . The urban areas are compared in terms of total and type of material input, destination of material inputs within the economy and analysis of the manufacturing sectors. | The physical structure of urban economies — Comparative assessment [Report] | Samuel Niza and André Pina and Daniela Ferreira and Luis Santos and Paulo Ferrão | Report | reports | 2013 |
Case Study
China
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
France
Lisbon
Method
Paris
Portugal
Seoul
Shanghai
Single point in time
South Korea
Urban
|
| Sustainable Urban Metabolism Table of Contents Part I: Urban Metabolism: Defining a Field 1. Industrial Ecology: A Metaphor for Sustainable Development 2. Urban Metabolism: Resource Consumption of Cities 3. Intellectual Foundations and Key Insights Part II: Industrial Ecology: A Framework 4. Industrial Ecology: A Framework of Tools and Practices 5. Industrial Ecology as a Framework for a Sustainable Urban Metabolism Part III: Sustainable Urban Systems 6. Green Urban Policies and Development 7. Urban Typologies: Prospects and Indicators 8. Complexities and Dynamics of Urban Systems 9. Integrated Approaches to Sustainable Urban Metabolism Part IV: Mapping and Assessing Urban Metabolism 10. Urban Metabolism in Practice: Case Studies from Developed Countries 11. The Challenge of Urban Metabolism in a Developing Context | Sustainable Urban Metabolism | Ferrão, Paulo and Fernández, John E. | Book | academic | 2013 |
Ecological Footprint Analysis (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Urban
|
| Sustainable urban metabolism as a link between bio-physical sciences and urban planning: The BRIDGE project Urban metabolism considers a city as a system with flows of energy and material between it and the environment. Recent advances in bio-physical sciences provide methods and models to estimate local scale energy, water, carbon and pollutant fluxes. However, good communication is required to provide this new knowledge and its implications to endusers (such as urban planners, architects and engineers). The FP7 project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism) aimed to address this gap by illustrating the advantages of considering these issues in urban planning. The BRIDGE Decision Support System (DSS) aids the evaluation of the sustainability of urban planning interventions. The Multi Criteria Analysis approach adopted provides a method to cope with the complexity of urban metabolism. In consultation with targeted end-users, objectives were defined in relation to the interactions between the environmental elements (fluxes of energy, water, carbon and pollutants) and socioeconomic components (investment costs, housing, employment, etc.) of urban sustainability. The tool was tested in five case study cities: Helsinki, Athens, London, Florence and Gliwice; and sub-models were evaluated using flux data selected. This overview of the BRIDGE project covers the methods and tools used to measure and model the physical flows, the selected set of sustainability indicators, the methodological framework for evaluating urban planning alternatives and the resulting DSS prototype. | Sustainable urban metabolism as a link between bio-physical sciences and ... | Chrysoulakis, Nektarios and Lopes, Myriam and San José, Roberto and Betham Grimmond , Christine Susan and Jones , Mike B. and Magliulo , Vincenzo and Klostermann , Judith E.M. and Synnefa , Afroditi and Mitraka , Zina and Castro, Eduardo A. and González , Ainhoa and Vogt , Roland and Vesala , Timo and Spano , Donatella and Pigeon , Gregoire and Freer-Smith , Peter and Staszewski , Tomasz and Hodges , Nick and Mills , Gerald and Cartalis, Constantinos | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Athens
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Finland
Gliwice
Greece
Helsinki
Italy
London
Method
Poland
Single point in time
United Kingdom
Urban
|
| The Intimacy of Human-Nature Interactions on Islands Islands provide a place to conceptualise human-nature interactions in socio-ecological systems and to explore how such phenomena occur within decisive boundaries. Isolation, vulnerability to disruption, and constraints on the availability of natural resources add urgency to island sustainability questions with limited solution sets. This chapter presents findings that contribute to the larger issues of resiliency and vulnerability on islands. Cross-cutting reflections are offered based on studies conducted over the last 10 years at the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology of four diverse islands: Singapore, a highly developed island city-state; Puerto Rico, an island rich with nature and industry; O’ahu, a high density, tourism-dependent island, home to Honolulu, Hawai’i; and Hawai’i Island, also known as “The Big Island”, with a larger land area and a lower population density than O’ahu. Over the course of the twentieth century, each of these islands became heavily dependent on imports such as water, food, or fuel to sustain basic human needs and modern economic functions. Within the last decade, each has consciously sought to restructure its socio-ecological configurations by using more locally available resources in one or more of its metabolic linkages. This pattern has the potential to reconnect island economies with their natural systems while simultaneously enhancing relationships and increasing resilience. | The Intimacy of Human-Nature Interactions on Islands | Chertow, M; Fugate, E; Ashton, W. | Book Section | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Sub-national
Sustainable production and consumption
|
| The Steel Scrap Age Steel production accounts for 25% of industrial carbon emissions. Long-term forecasts of steel demand and scrap supply are needed to develop strategies for how the steel industry could respond to industrialization and urbanization in the developing world while simultaneously reducing its environmental impact, and in particular, its carbon footprint. We developed a dynamic stock model to estimate future final demand for steel and the available scrap for 10 world regions. Based on evidence from developed countries, we assumed that per capita in-use stocks will saturate eventually. We determined the response of the entire steel cycle to stock saturation, in particular the future split between primary and secondary steel production. During the 21st century, steel demand may peak in the developed world, China, the Middle East, Latin America, and India. As China completes its industrialization, global primary steel production may peak between 2020 and 2030 and decline thereafter. We developed a capacity model to show how extensive trade of finished steel could prolong the lifetime of the Chinese steelmaking assets. Secondary steel production will more than double by 2050, and it may surpass primary production between 2050 and 2060: the late 21st century can become the steel scrap age. | The Steel Scrap Age | Pauliuk, Stefan, and Milford, Rachel L., and Müller, Daniel B., and Allwood, Julian M. | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
Global
Metals
Uncertainty
|
| Mapping the global journey of anthropogenic aluminium: a trade-linked multilevel material flow analysis Material cycles have become increasingly coupled and interconnected in a globalizing era. While material flow analysis (MFA) has been widely used to characterize stocks and flows along technological life cycle within a specific geographical area, trade networks among individual cycles have remained largely unexplored. Here we developed a trade-linked multilevel MFA model to map the contemporary global journey of anthropogenic aluminum. We demonstrate that the anthropogenic aluminum cycle depends substantially on international trade of aluminum in all forms and becomes highly interconnected in nature. While the Southern hemisphere is the main primary resource supplier, aluminum production and consumption concentrate in the Northern hemisphere, where we also find the largest potential for recycling. The more developed countries tend to have a substantial and increasing presence throughout the stages after bauxite refining and possess highly consumption-based cycles, thus maintaining advantages both economically and environmentally. A small group of countries plays a key role in the global redistribution of aluminum and in the connectivity of the network, which may render some countries vulnerable to supply disruption. The model provides potential insights to inform government and industry policies in resource criticality, supply chain security, value chain management, and cross-boundary environmental impacts mitigation. | Mapping the global journey of anthropogenic aluminium: a trade-linked multilevel ... | Gang Liu, and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Multi-scale
Single point in time
|
| The Roles of Energy and Material Efficiency in Meeting Steel Industry CO2 Targets Identifying strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from steel production requires a comprehensive model of the sector but previous work has either failed to consider the whole supply chain or considered only a subset of possible abatement options. In this work, a global mass flow analysis is combined with process emissions intensities to allow forecasts of future steel sector emissions under all abatement options. Scenario analysis shows that global capacity for primary steel production is already near to a peak and that if sectoral emissions are to be reduced by 50% by 2050, the last required blast furnace will be built by 2020. Emissions reduction targets cannot be met by energy and emissions efficiency alone, but deploying material efficiency provides sufficient extra abatement potential. | The Roles of Energy and Material Efficiency in Meeting Steel ... | Milford, Rachel L., and Pauliuk, Stefan, and Allwood, Julian M., and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Emissions (must be merged with Emissions)
Energy
Future Scenario
Global
Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)
Metals
|
| Material use and material efficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean Different world regions have followed very different trajectories for natural resources use over the recent decades. Latin America has pursued a development path based largely on exports of primary resources. Adopting this path has characteristic environmental and social impacts. In this paper, we provide the first broad based estimate of material use and material efficiency for the region, beginning in 1970 and extending to the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. The results show a region with rapidly growing primary materials consumption, which is simultaneously becoming less efficient at converting those resources into national income. Using an IPAT framework, we found that population growth and rising per-capita incomes made comparable contributions to growing material use, while technological change as reflected in material intensity, did not moderate consumption. Increasing materials intensity, observed for the region as a whole, is also observed for most individual countries. This contrasts with some other world regions, and implies that many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will confront higher environmental pressures than expected when expanding their extractive industries to take advantage of new demand from other world regions, while simultaneously supplying the requirements for their own domestic industrial transformations and urbanization. | Material use and material efficiency in Latin America and the ... | West, J; Schandl, H. | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Decoupling
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Sub-national
|
| How to Deal with Resource Productivity Resource productivity enhancement stands at the center of tackling issues on environmental pollution and resource scarcity. Identifying influential socioeconomic factors should be the first step in establishing and improving resource management policy. This study compares and analyzes data from multiple countries to construct a resource productivity simulation model. The socioeconomic factors and their characteristic patterns are discussed in detail. The results demonstrate that the major factors influencing resource productivity include income level, population density, economic structure, energy structure, and raw material trade. Among these factors, the three most important are income level, population density, and economic structure. The influencing patterns can be summarized as follows: (1) Resource productivity increases with increasing income levels. (2) Countries with high population density are inclined to demonstrate high resource productivity. (3) The economic structure shows a biphase influence on resource productivity, that is, during industrialization, decreased agricultural activity and increased industrial activity lead to higher resource productivity. On the other hand, after industrialization, decreasing industrial activity and an expanding service sector become the major impetus of resource productivity enhancement. (4) Raw material export demonstrates a negative effect on resource productivity. Countries that depend heavily on raw material export show a unique resource productivity evolution pattern. For these countries, relatively high resource productivity in low income phases and relatively low resource productivity in high income phases show only small increases in resource efficiency and economic growth. Finally, insights from the study are transformed into suggestions for sustainable resource management and resource productivity enhancement. | How to Deal with Resource Productivity | Yu Gan, Tianzhu Zhang, Sai Liang, Zhongnan Zhao, and Nan Li | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
National
|
| Industrial metabolism of PVC in China: A dynamic material flow analysis In China, the rapid development of the polyvinylchloride (PVC) industry will inevitably lead to various environmental problems. This paper studies the PVC metabolism further by (1) constructing dynamic models based on material flow analysis (MFA), (2) introducing calculation on detailed lifetime distribution of different types of products and recycling, and (3) obtaining the performances of waste emissions and accumulation as a function of raw material input and time. Based on system evolution theory and population development models, the developing trend of the PVC industry is studied, and annual consumptions in future years are predicted. The annual emission and accumulation after metabolism can be calculated by tracking the amount of raw material input, existing form and process flow for a single year (2003), as well as over a longer period (from 1958 to 2048) in China. Analysis indicates that over 0.6 billion tons of PVC waste will have accumulated in the environment by the end of 2050. In this scenario analysis, the effects of product structure, lifetime distribution, mechanical recycling, chemical recycling and incineration on waste output are all taken into consideration. The product metabolism process can be decelerated by changing these factors appropriately. However, mechanical recycling and chemical recycling are the most effective solutions. | Industrial metabolism of PVC in China: A dynamic material flow ... | Zhou, Yucheng; Yang, Ning; Hu, Shanying | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
China
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
PVC
Research and Analysis
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Time series
Waste
|
| Circular economy, industrial ecology - Elements of reflection at the Ile-de-France scale The circular economy, like industrial ecology, are concepts that are becoming increasingly important in debates and responses to economic and environmental challenges. Lastly, the Roadmap of the last En-vironmental Conference has made it a priority for development, and more particularly for the regions. If the concepts are innovative, they nonetheless refer to old eco-nomic questions and Community and national policies already in place. These strategies are all aimed at decoupling the dynamic of economic growth and resource consumption in the medium and long term. Chapter 1 of this study lays the foundation for the circular economy and recalls global resource issues. A brief review of the strategies in place and the existing margins of progress is also established, in the light of the principles of action of the circular economy. Chapter 2 proposes to illustrate this concept in Ile-de-France scale and to identify the circular potentials of the Ile-de-France economic ecosystem. In the absence of an ad hoc methodology to apprehend these margins of maneuver in a systemic way, we have gathered here several registers of information that provide partial but complementary insights into the potential of the regional circular economy. The first is based on material flow accounting and shows, in large numbers and by major category of resources, the functioning and dependencies of the regional economic ecosystem. The second proposed lighting is based on the performance of waste recovery, downstream of the value chain, from a "classical" perspective of development of industrial sectors. Special attention is given to the specific issues of the construction sector. Lastly, an overview of the orientations of the main regional policies which are already directly or indirectly involved in setting up the circular economy provides a final element of lighting. But beyond the light of the ideas proposed at this stage, it is undoubtedly in the search for new articulations between economic actors that future potential in the circular economy reside. Thus, chapter 3 presents the founding principles of the territorial projects of industrial ecology and illustrates them by various national and international examples. There will also be developed the main lessons and feedback. Finally, we will see, throughout this study, that other levers still remain to be experienced. Because the implementation of a circular economy requires above all a paradigm shift on all modes of production and consumption. This document, although not exhaustive, proposes to gather first regional framework elements on circular economy. It is hoped that it will provide a cross-reference frame of reference for discussion from both a methodological and a more operational point of view on the priorities to be given and the action plans to be implemented to define and develop a regional circular economy strategy. L’économie circulaire, tout comme l’écologie industrielle, sont des concepts qui prennent une place de plus en plus importante dans les débats et les réponses apportées aux en-jeux économiques et environnementaux. La feuille de route de la dernière Conférence En-vironnementale en a d’ailleurs fait un axe prioritaire de développement, et plus particuliè-rement pour les régions. Si les concepts sont innovants, ils font néanmoins référence à des questionnements éco-nomiques anciens et à des politiques communautaires et nationales d’ores et déjà en place. Ces stratégies visent toutes à découpler la dynamique de croissance économique, de la consommation des ressources, à moyen et long terme. Le chapitre 1 de cette étude pose les fondements de l’économie circulaire et rappelle les enjeux sur les ressources à l’échelle globale. Un bref état des lieux des stratégies en place et des marges de progres-sion existantes est également établi, à la lumière des principes d’action de l’économie cir-culaire. Le chapitre 2 propose quant à lui d’illustrer ce concept à l’échelle de l’Ile-de-France et d’identifier les potentiels circulaires de l’écosystème économique francilien. A défaut de méthodologie ad hoc pour appréhender ces marges de manœuvre de manière systémique, nous avons réuni ici plusieurs registres d’informations qui éclairent de manière partielle mais néanmoins complémentaires, les potentiels de l’économie circulaire régionale. Le premier se fonde sur la comptabilité de flux de matières et donne à voir, en masse et par grande catégorie de ressources, le fonctionnement et les dépendances de l’écosystème économique régional. Le deuxième éclairage proposé repose sur les performances de va-lorisation des déchets, à l’aval de la chaine de valeur, dans une perspective «classique» de développement de filières industrielles. Une attention particulière est portée aux enjeux spécifiques du secteur du BTP. Enfin, un état des lieux des orientations des principales politiques régionales qui participent d’ores et déjà plus ou moinsdirectement à la mise en place de l’économie circulaire fournit un dernier élément d’éclairage. Mais au-delà des éclairages proposés à ce stade, c’est sans doute dans la recherche de nouvelles articulations entre acteurs économiques, que résident les futurs potentiels en matière d’économie circulaire. Ainsi, le chapitre 3 présente les principes fondateurs des projets territoriaux d’écologie industrielle et les illustre par différents exemples nationaux et internationaux. Y seront également développés les principaux enseignements et retours d’expériences. Enfin, nous verrons, tout au long de cette étude, que d’autres leviers restent encore à ex-périmenter. Car la mise en œuvre d’une économie circulaire requiert surtout un change-ment de paradigme sur l’ensemble des modes de production et de consommation. Ce document, bien que non exhaustif, se propose de réunir des premiers éléments de cadrage régionaux sur l’économie circulaire. Nous espérons qu’il permettra de poser un cadre de référence transversal, qui servira à nourrir les discussions tant d’un point de vue métho-dologique que d’un point de vue plus opérationnel, sur les priorités à donner et sur les le-viers d’action à mettre en œuvre pour définir et élaborer une stratégie régionale d’économie circulaire. | Circular economy, industrial ecology - Elements of reflection at the ... | Sandrine Gueymard, Cristina Lopez | Report | reports | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Ile-de-France
|
| Urban metabolism assessment tools for resource efficient urban infrastructure Report prepared by UNEP as part of the 2013 Comprehensive Review of the Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities In cooperation with researchers at the Sustainability Institute and University of Westminster Blake Robinson, Josephine Musango, Mark Swilling, Simon Joss and Sasha Mentz Lagrange | Urban metabolism assessment tools for resource efficient urban infrastructure | Robinson, Blake and Musango, Josephine and Swilling, Mark and Joss, Simon and Mentz Lagrange, Sasha | Report | reports | 2013 |
Ecological Footprint Analysis (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Review Paper
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Urban
Zotero import
|
| Urban metabolism: A review of research methodologies Urban metabolism analysis has become an important tool for the study of urban ecosystems. The problems of large metabolic throughput, low metabolic efficiency, and disordered metabolic processes are a major cause of unhealthy urban systems. In this paper, I summarize the international research on urban metabolism, and describe the progress that has been made in terms of research methodologies. I also review the methods used in accounting for and evaluating material and energy flows in urban metabolic processes, simulation of these flows using a network model, and practical applications of these methods. Based on this review of the literature, I propose directions for future research, and particularly the need to study the urban carbon metabolism because of the modern context of global climate change. Moreover, I recommend more research on the optimal regulation of urban metabolic systems. | Urban metabolism: A review of research methodologies | Yan Zhang | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Review Paper
Urban
Zotero import
|
| The importance of raw material equivalents in economy-wide material flow accounting and its policy dimension This article presents a comparison of indicators based on an economy-wide material flow analysis, namely imports, exports, domestic material consumption, raw material equivalents of imports, raw material equivalents of exports and raw material consumption. These indicators were calculated for the Czech Republic for 1995-2010 using, besides an economy-wide material flow analysis, the hybrid input-output life cycle assessment method, which allows for a calculation of raw material equivalents of imports and exports. The results show that a calculation of indicators, which include raw material equivalents, is useful, as it provides some important information which is not obvious from imports, exports and domestic material consumption indicators. We have proved that the latter group of indicators provide the incorrect information regarding the environmental pressure trend related to material flows, underestimate the overall pressure related to foreign trade and provide incorrect information on the importance of various material categories in particular indicators. Consequently, in the case of the Czech Republic, the implications stemming from these points such as the very high dependency of the Czech production system on metal ores from abroad and a rather unequal distribution of environmental pressures between the Czech Republic and its trading partners have not been more thoroughly addressed by Czech economic, environmental and sustainability policies so far and present unresolved issues which will have to be dealt with in the future. | The importance of raw material equivalents in economy-wide material flow ... | Jan Kovanda and Jan Weinzettel | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
Input-Output Analysis (IOA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
National
Raw Materials Equivalent (RME)
Time series
hybrid
|
| Data Mining for Material Flow Analysis: Application in the Territorial Breakdown of French Regions One of the major issues for assessment of the long-term sustainability of urban areas is related to the concept of \imported sustainability". In order to produce such an assessment for a given territory, one must rst identify and quantify the types of materials used, and the impacts associated to these uses. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is directly related to how the material circulates and how it is transformed within a territory. In most cases this analysis is performed at national and regional levels, where the statistical data is available. The challenge is to establish such an analysis at smaller scales, e.g. in the case of France, at the department or city level. Currently, few studies are done at these scales and when they exist, they are based on the extrapolation of data at the country or the region levels. In this thesis, the possibility of applying data analysis at the regional level by generating a mathematical model that can t well the data at regional scale and estimate well the departmental one is explored. The downscaling procedure relies on the assumption that the obtained model at level 'n' (for example region) will be also true at level 'n+1' (for example department), such that it could properly estimate the unknown data based on a set of chosen drivers. The tests show that it is very important to choose the proper drivers and the class of model. | Data Mining for Material Flow Analysis: Application in the Territorial ... | Brinduşa Smaranda | Thesis | theses | 2013 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
France
Method
Single point in time
Urban
|
| Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) Compilation Guide 2013 The first version of Eurostat’s “Economy Wide Material Flow Accounts: Compilation Guidelines” was released in draft form in 2007. It has been used by national statistical offices to support the collection of EW-MFA data and to complete the EW-MFA questionnaire sent out by Eurostat in 2007. Revised versions of the compilation guide were prepared for supporting the data collections via the 2009, 2011, and the 2012 questionnaire. This 2013 version of the Compilation Guidelines refers to the 2013 EW-MFA Questionnaire. The revisions in the 2013 version are minor and a result of feedbacks from and discussions with experts from national statistical offices. | Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) Compilation Guide 2013 | Eurostat | Report | reports | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
|
| Total Material Requirement of Growing China: 1995-2008 This article presents the accounts of China’s Total Material Requirement (TMR) during 1995–2008, which were compiled under the guidelines of Eurostat (2009) and with the Hidden Flow (HF) coefficients developed by the Wuppertal Institute. Subsequently, comparisons with previous studies are conducted. Using decomposition, we finally examine the influential factors that have changed the TMR of China. The main findings are the following: (1) During 1995–2008 China’s TMR increased from 32.7 Gt to 57.0 Gt. Domestic extraction dominated China’s TMR, but a continuous decrease of its shares can be observed. In terms of material types, excavation constituted the biggest component of China’s TMR, and a shift from biomass to metallic minerals is apparent; (2) Compared with two previous studies on China’s TMR, the amounts of TMR in this study are similar to the others, whereas the amounts of the used part of TMR (Direct Material Input, DMI) are quite different as a result of following different guidelines; (3) Compared with developed countries, China’s TMR per capita was much lower, but a continuous increase of this indicator can be observed; (4) Factors of Affluence (A) and Material Intensity (T), respectively, contributed the most to the increase and decrease of TMR, but the overall decrease effect is limited. | Total Material Requirement of Growing China: 1995-2008 | Wang, Heming and Yue, Qiang and Lu, Zhongwu and Schuetz, Helmut and Bringezu, Stefan | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Raw Materials Equivalent (RME)
|
| Material use and material efficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean Different world regions have followed very different trajectories for natural resources use over the recent decades. Latin America has pursued a development path based largely on exports of primary resources. Adopting this path has characteristic environmental and social impacts. In this paper, we provide the first broad based estimate of material use and material efficiency for the region, beginning in 1970 and extending to the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. The results show a region with rapidly growing primary materials consumption, which is simultaneously becoming less efficient at converting those resources into national income. Using an IPAT framework, we found that population growth and rising per-capita incomes made comparable contributions to growing material use, while technological change as reflected in material intensity, did not moderate consumption. Increasing materials intensity, observed for the region as a whole, is also observed for most individual countries. This contrasts with some other world regions, and implies that many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will confront higher environmental pressures than expected when expanding their extractive industries to take advantage of new demand from other world regions, while simultaneously supplying the requirements for their own domestic industrial transformations and urbanization. | Material use and material efficiency in Latin America and the ... | Schandl, Heinz and West, James | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Time series
|
| Steel all over the world: Estimating in-use stocks of iron for 200 countries Industrialization and urbanization in the developing world have boosted steel demand during the recent two decades. Reliable estimates on how much steel is required for high economic development are necessary to better understand the future challenges for employment, resource management, capacity planning, and climate change mitigation within the steel sector. During their use phase, steel-containing products provide service to people, and the size of the in-use stock of steel can serve as an indicator of the total service level. We apply dynamic material flow analysis to estimate in-use stocks of steel in about 200 countries and identify patterns of how stocks evolve over time. Three different models of the steel cycle are applied and a full uncertainty analysis is conducted to obtain reliable stock estimates for the period 1700-2008. Per capita in-use stocks in countries with a long industrial history, e.g., the U.S, the UK, or Germany, are between 11 and 16 tons, and stock accumulation is slowing down or has come to a halt. Stocks in countries that industrialized rather recently, such as South Korea or Portugal, are between 6 and 10 tons per capita and grow fast. In several countries, per capita in-use stocks of steel have saturated or are close to saturation. We identify the range of saturation to be 13 ± 2 tons for the total per capita stock, which includes 10 ± 2 tons for construction, 1.3 ± 0.5 tons for machinery, 1.5 ± 0.7 tons for transportation, and 0.6 ± 0.2 tons for appliances and containers. The time series for the stocks and the saturation levels can be used to estimate future steel production and scrap supply. | Steel all over the world: Estimating in-use stocks of iron ... | Pauliuk, Stefan, and Wang, Tao, and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Material Stock Analysis (MSA)
Multi-scale
National
Time series
Uncertainty
|
| Stock dynamics and emission pathways of the global aluminium cycle Climate change mitigation in the materials sector faces a twin challenge: satisfying rapidly rising global demand for materials while significantly curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. Process efficiency improvement and recycling can contribute to reducing emissions per material output; however, long-term material demand and scrap availability for recycling depend fundamentally on the dynamics of societies' stocks of products in use, an issue that has been largely neglected in climate science. Here, we show that aluminium in-use stock patterns set essential boundary conditions for future emission pathways, which has significant implications for mitigation priority setting. If developing countries follow industrialized countries in their aluminium stock patterns, a 50% emission reduction by 2050 below 2000 levels cannot be reached even under very optimistic recycling and technology assumptions. The target can be reached only if future global per-capita aluminium stocks saturate at a level much lower than that in present major industrialized countries. As long as global in-use stocks are growing rapidly, radical new technologies in primary production (for example, inert anode and carbon capture and storage) have the greatest impact in emission reduction; however, their window of opportunity is closing once the stocks begin to saturate and the largest reduction potential shifts to post-consumer scrap recycling. | Stock dynamics and emission pathways of the global aluminium cycle | Gang Liu, and Bangs, Colton E, and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2013 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
Global
Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)
Metals
Research and Analysis
|
| Aluminium Recycling - Raw material supply from a volume and quality constraint system The limited availability of energy and raw materials as well as the ambitious emission reduction targets are of big concern in the metallurgical industry as in other base materials industries. Consequently resource efficiency targets are set under EU's Raw Material Initiative, measures are taken to reduce GHG-emissions and there is a focus on carbon footprint of products and companies. For example legislators and stakeholders request a high recycled content in downstream products. Due to missing knowledge about the relative availability of secondary raw materials in growing markets the debate of recycling content vs. end-of-life recycling is still ongoing. In case of the European aluminium industry the remaining primary smelters suffer from high costs of energy and the emission trading system. A survival is depending on acceptable power contracts and their role as active player in the electricity grid modulation. Furthermore restructuring and consolidation of the recycling industry is not finalized. On the other hand collected aluminium scrap volumes are expected to increase significantly and therefore, remelters and integrated cast houses prepare themselves to remelt different kinds of scrap to minimize the use of primary ingots. But depending on the final product properties the chemical composition of aluminium alloys has to fulfil strict specifications. Consequently the usability of secondary raw materials can be limited or would require costly up-grading and sorting processes. In order to analyse and forecast the scrap availability the use of Material Flow Analysis gains increasing importance. A high accuracy is requested from MFA calculations when quantity and quality of particular material flows are of major concern. Applying existing models, two major issues become obvious, which are discussed in this paper on a global scale: The limited availability of end-of-life scrap and possible quality constraints of the current recycling system. | Aluminium Recycling - Raw material supply from a volume and ... | Rombach, Georg, and Modaresi, Roja, and Muller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Data Quality
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
Global
Metals
Policy
Time series
|
| Mapping the global flow of steel: From steelmaking to end-use goods Our society is addicted to steel. Global demand for steel has risen to 1.4 billion tonnes a year and is set to at least double by 2050, while the steel industry generates nearly a 10th of the world's energy related CO2 emissions. Meeting our 2050 climate change targets would require a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions for every tonne of steel produced and finding credible solutions is proving a challenge. The starting point for understanding the environmental impacts of steel production is to accurately map the global steel supply chain and identify the biggest steel flows where actions can be directed to deliver the largest impact. In this paper we present a map of global steel, which for the first time traces steel flows from steelmaking, through casting, forming, and rolling, to the fabrication of final goods. The diagram reveals the relative scale of steel flows and shows where efforts to improve energy and material efficiency should be focused. | Mapping the global flow of steel: From steelmaking to end-use ... | Cullen, Jonathan M and Allwood, Julian M and Bambach, Margarita D | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Metals
|
| From Eradication To Intervention: Urban Informal Ecosystem Scope: The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential for sustainable urban development within the African context. Framing the problem: Understanding urban development within the African context requires foremost that we understand the driving forces that continue to create patterns of inequality in the way people in the urban context are afforded opportunity and access to resources. This problem is framed by exploring the impact of globalisation and neoliberalism on urban development and how this has reduced the ability for governments to achieve infrastructure networks that address the needs all urban dwellers equally. In the South African context, this has resulted in a new wave of protests, typically referred to as service delivery protests. These protests called for more than just the delivery of physical infrastructure such as houses, water and sanitation. In many instances these are calls for accountability and participatory governance from people who are fighting against corruption. However, there remains an underlying frustration for poor urban communities related inequality urban resources, exemplified by the slow delivery of housing. Grappling with the housing backlog numbers this research seeks to describe the ‘housing delusion', pointing to the amount of time and rate of delivery required to address the current and escalating backlog. Sustainable development and issues associated with our current Cartesian paradigm are considered within a systems framework and the need to consider the interconnectedness of all things. The issues of unsustainable development are further expanded, by framing concepts of urban ecology and broken cycles related to infrastructure and the poor within the urban context. The problem of social and economic exclusion experienced by a high number of unemployed urban residents who face jobless futures with little prospect of moving out of poverty and informality is described, making important links to infrastructure delivery, particularly housing, and job creation. Describing notions of embedded power within urban development is used to help contextualise the uneven access to resources and infrastructure in the African city, making links back to globalisation and pressure on governments to provide economic infrastructure. | From Eradication To Intervention: Urban Informal Ecosystem | Royden-Turner, Shannon | Thesis | theses | 2012 |
Cape Town
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Informal
Single point in time
South Africa
Urban
|
| India's biophysical economy, 1961–2008. Sustainability in a national and global context India's economic growth in the last decade has raised several concerns in terms of its present and future resource demands for materials and energy. While per capita resource consumption is still extremely modest but on the rise, its sheer population qualifies India as a fast growing giant with material and energy throughput that is growing rapidly . If such national and local trends continue, the challenges for regional, national as well as global sustainability are immense in terms of future resource availability, social conflicts, pressure on land and ecosystems and atmospheric emissions. Using the concepts of social metabolism and material flow analysis, this paper presents an original study quantifying resource use trajectories for India from 1961 up to 2008. We argue for India's need to grow in order to be able to provide a reasonable material standard of living for its vast population. To this end, the challenge is in avoiding the precarious path so far followed by industrialised countries in Europe and Asia, but to opt for a regime shift towards sustainability in terms of resource use by building on a host of promising examples and taking opportunities of existing niches to make India a trendsetter. | India's biophysical economy, 1961–2008. Sustainability in a national and global ... | Singh, Simron and Krausmann, Fridolin and Gingrich, Simone and Haberl, Helmut and Erb, Karl-Heinz and Lanz, Peter and Martinez-Alier, Joan and Temper, Leah | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
India
National
Time series
|
| Moving towards the circular economy - the role of stocks in the Chinese steel cycle As the world's largest CO2 emitter and steel producer, China has set the ambitious goal of establishing a circular economy which aims at reconciling economic development with environmental protection and sustainable resource use. This work applies dynamic material flow analysis to forecast production, recycling, and iron ore consumption in the Chinese steel cycle until 2100 by using steel services in terms of in-use stock per capita as driver of future development. The whole cycle is modeled to determine possible responses of the steel industry in light of the circular economy concept. If per-capita stock saturates at 8-12 tons as evidence from industrialized countries suggests, consumption may peak between 2015 and 2020, whereupon it is likely to drop by up to 40% until 2050. A slower growing in-use stock could mitigate this peak and hence reduce overcapacity in primary production. Old scrap supply will increase substantially and it could replace up to 80% of iron ore as resource for steel making by 2050. This would require advanced recycling technologies as manufacturers of machinery and transportation equipment would have to shift to secondary steel as well as new capacities in secondary production which could, however, make redundant already existing integrated steel plants. | Moving towards the circular economy - the role of stocks ... | Pauliuk, Stefan, and Wang, Tao, and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
China
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
Metals
Policy
|
| Metabolism of the Anthroposphere: Analysis, Evaluation, Design Over the last several thousand years of human life on Earth, agricultural settlements became urban cores, and these regional settlements became tightly connected through infrastructures transporting people, materials, and information. This global network of urban systems, including ecosystems, is the anthroposphere; the physical flows and stocks of matter and energy within it form its metabolism. This book offers an overview of the metabolism of the anthroposphere, with an emphasis on the design of metabolic systems. It takes a cultural historical perspective, supported with methodology from the natural sciences and engineering. The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of regional development, environmental protection, and material management. It will also be a resource for undergraduate and graduate students in industrial ecology, environmental engineering, and resource management. The authors describe the characteristics of material stocks and flows of human settlements in space and time; introduce the method of material flow analysis (MFA) for metabolic studies; analyze regional metabolism and the material systems generated by basic activities; and offer four case studies of optimal metabolic system design: phosphorus management, urban mining, waste management, and mobility. This second edition of an extremely influential book has been substantially revised and greatly expanded. Its new emphasis on design and resource utilization reflects recent debates and scholarship on sustainable development and climate change. | Metabolism of the Anthroposphere: Analysis, Evaluation, Design | Peter Baccini and Paul Brunner | Book | academic | 2012 |
Case Study
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Material Stock Analysis (MSA)
Method
Multi-scale
Practical Guides and Handbooks
Research and Analysis
Urban Ecology
Zotero2
|
| Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) Compilation Guide 2012 No abstract available. | Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) Compilation Guide 2012 | Eurostat | Report | reports | 2012 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
|
| The role of automobiles for the future of aluminium recycling To reach required product qualities with lowest costs, aluminum postconsumer scrap is currently recycled using strategies of downgrading and dilution, due to difficulties in refining. These strategies depend on a continuous and fast growth of the bottom reservoir of the aluminum downgrading cascade, which is formed by secondary castings, mainly used in automotive applications. A dynamic material flow model for the global vehicle system was developed to assess the likelihood, timing, and extent of a potential scrap surplus. The results demonstrate that a continuation of the above-mentioned strategies will lead to a nonrecyclable scrap surplus by around 2018 ± 5 if no additional measures are taken. The surplus could grow to reach a level of 0.4-2 kg/cap/yr in 2050, corresponding to a loss of energy saving potential of 43-240 TWh/yr electricity. Various intervention options for avoiding scrap surplus are discussed. Effective strategies need to include an immediate and rapid penetration of dramatically improved scrap sorting technologies for end-of-life vehicles and other aluminum applications. | The role of automobiles for the future of aluminium recycling | Modaresi, Roja, and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
Metals
Policy
Transportation
|
| Material flows and material productivity in China, Australia, and Japan This article presents material flows and material productivity data and indicators for Australia, China, and Japan for the period 1970 to 2005. The main data used come from a new material flows database for the Asia-Pacific region that was assembled using up-to-date standardized methodologies of material flow accounting and significantly extends the knowledge base available for studies on resource use dynamics in the region. We show that the three nations studied here have diverging patterns of resource use, and that these patterns can be linked to interdependencies between them and the very different roles each nation plays within a globalized system of natural resource exploitation. We also conduct a brief analysis of the most important drivers of changes in their resource use over the period, using an IPAT framework (Impact = Population × Affluence × Technology). The fundamentally different economic structures and trading roles of each country, that is, primary resource provider (Australia), mature and advanced manufacturer (Japan), and rapidly industrializing developing country (China), lead to starkly different contexts in which appropriate policies to encourage sustainable resource use must be formulated. | Material flows and material productivity in China, Australia, and Japan | Schandl, Heinz and West, James | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Australia
Case Study
China
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Japan
National
Time series
|
| The physical dimension of international trade, part 2: Indirect global resource flows between 1962 and 2005 Global trade is increasingly being challenged by observations of growing burden shifting, in particular of environmental problems. This paper presents the first worldwide calculations of shifted burden based on material flow indicators, in particular direct and indirect physical trade balances. This study covers the period between 1962 and 2005 and includes between 82 and 173 countries per year. The results show that indirect trade flow volumes have increased to around 41 billion tonnes in 2005. The traded resources with the highest share of associated indirect flows are iron, hard coal, copper, tin and increasingly palm oil. Regarding the burden balance between regions, Europe is the biggest shifter whereas Australia and Latin America are the largest takers of environmental burden due to resource extraction. To evaluate the findings from a global perspective, the results are analysed in terms of resource flow induced environmental pressure related to a country's land area in terms of total and per capita area. Resource endowment and population density seem to be more relevant in determining the physical trade balance, including indirect flows, than income level. | The physical dimension of international trade, part 2: Indirect global ... | Dittrich, Monika and Bringezu, Stefan and Schütz, Helmut | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Imports and Exports
Time series
|
| Moving Toward the Circular Economy: The Role of Stocks in the Chinese Steel Cycle As the world's largest CO2 emitter and steel producer, China has set the ambitious goal of establishing a circular economy which aims at reconciling economic development with environmental protection and sustainable resource use. This work applies dynamic material flow analysis to forecast production, recycling, and iron ore consumption in the Chinese steel cycle until 2100 by using steel services in terms of in-use stock per capita as driver of future development. The whole cycle is modeled to determine possible responses of the steel industry in light of the circular economy concept. If per-capita stock saturates at 8-12 tons as evidence from industrialized countries suggests, consumption may peak between 2015 and 2020, whereupon it is likely to drop by up to 40\% until 2050. A slower growing in-use stock could mitigate this peak and hence reduce overcapacity in primary production. Old scrap supply will increase substantially and it could replace up to 80\% of iron ore as resource for steel making by 2050. This would require advanced recycling technologies as manufacturers of machinery and transportation equipment would have to shift to secondary steel as well as new capacities in secondary production which could, however, make redundant already existing integrated steel plants. | Moving Toward the Circular Economy: The Role of Stocks in ... | Pauliuk, Stefan and Wang, Tao and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2012 |
Case Study
China
Circular Economy
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Future Scenario
Metals
National
Zotero import
Zotero2
|
| The Material Consumption of Singapore’s Economy: An Industrial Ecology Approach In a world deeply concerned about future accessibility of physical resources, especially materials, water and energy, the young field of industrial ecology brings resolute attention to tracking the flows of these resources through systems at different scales. Material flow analysis is an industrial ecology tool used to examine system metabolism by tracking the input, output, conversion and accumulation of materials, water, energy or selected substances, helping to inform decisions about resource availability, waste management and pollution reduction at local, regional or global levels. With the exception of several nature reserves, the island city-state of Singapore is highly urbanized, and has been dependent upon industrial and manufacturing activities for its national standing and economic growth. As such, mapping Singapore’s ‘urban metabolism’ through a material flow analysis (MFA) approach, with a particular focus on materials catalogued by international trade databases, is useful for understanding the island’s level of sustainable resources use within the context of the global economy and ecosystem. This study compares relevant data describing Singapore’s material flows for the years 2000, 2004 and 2008. Domestic material consumption on the island is found to be highly variable across the three study years. This primarily reflects Singapore’s levels of construction activity, including considerable additions of actual land area to the island. The flux in the quantity of sand imports to Singapore illustrates the volatility that one category of goods can introduce to the material record of an otherwise stable economy. For countries that are becoming increasingly dependent on imported products, the implication is that a growing share of the impact is taking place in other countries. Global economic trends are also determined to have an effect on Singapore’s additions to stock vs. its exports, as its gross domestic product is highly reliant on trade activity. | The Material Consumption of Singapore’s Economy: An Industrial Ecology Approach | Chertow, Marian; Choi, Esther S; Lee, Keith | Book Section | academic | 2011 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
Urban
|
| Sociometabolic transitions in subsistence communities: Boserup revisited in four comparative case studies In the context of sustainable development, we investigate four subsistence communities, one each from India, Bolivia, Laos and Thailand, to understand the systemic interrelations between the food production systems and related environmental pressures. In doing so, we revisit Ester Boserup's theory of increasing land productivity at the expense of declining labour productivity as a consequence of agricultural intensification. Our data confirm Boserup's assumptions within the reach of traditional agriculture, but find them not to apply to hunting & gathering communities and to agricultural systems now increasingly dependent on fossil fuels and industrial fertilizers. Instead we propose a theory of 'sociometabolic transitions' as being more appropriate to understanding transitions in land and labour productivity across a wider range of modes of subsistence. | Sociometabolic transitions in subsistence communities: Boserup revisited in four comparative ... | Fischer-Kowalski, Marina and Singh, Simron J. and Ringhofer, Lisa and Grünbühel, Clemens M. and Lauk, Christian and Remesch, Alexander | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Bolivia
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
India
Laos
Rural
Single point in time
Thailand
|
| Socio-metabolic transitions in subsistence communities. Boserup Revisted In the context of sustainable development, we investigatefour subsistence communities, one each from India, Bolivia,Laos and Thailand,to understand the systemic interrelationsbetween the food production systems and related environ-mental pressures. In doing so, we revisit Ester Boserup’s the-ory of increasing land productivity at the expense of declin-ing labour productivity as a consequence of agricultural in-tensification. Our data confirm Boserup’s assumptions with-in the reach of traditional agriculture, but find them not toapply to hunting & gathering communities and to agricultur-al systems now increasingly dependent on fossil fuels and in-dustrial fertilizers. Instead we propose a theory of “so-ciometabolic transitions” as being more appropriate to un-derstanding transitions in land and labour productivityacross a wider range of modes of subsistence. | Socio-metabolic transitions in subsistence communities. Boserup Revisted | Fischer-Kowalski, M; Singh, S. J; Ringhofer, L; Grünbühel, C; Lauk, C; Remesch, A. | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Food and agriculture
Island
Single point in time
Sub-national
Sustainable production and consumption
|
| Methodology and Indicators of Economy-wide Material Flow Accounting 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. | Methodology and Indicators of Economy-wide Material Flow Accounting | M. Fischer-Kowalski | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
Method
Zotero2
|
| Methodology and Indicators of Economy-wide Material Flow Accounting 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. | Methodology and Indicators of Economy-wide Material Flow Accounting | M. Fischer-Kowalski, F. Krausmann, S. Giljum, S. Lutter, A. Mayer, S. Bringezu, Y. Moriguchi, H. Sch¨utz, H. Schandl, and H. Weisz | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Biomass (must be merged with other Biomass)
Construction Materials
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Domestic extraction (DE)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Europe
Fossil Fuels
Future Scenario
Imports and Exports
Indicators - general
Metals
Method
Minerals
National
Single point in time
Time series
|
| Structural Decomposition Analysis of Raw Material Consumption The aim of this article is to quantify the drivers for the changes in raw material consumption (domestic material consumption expressed in the form of all materials extracted and used in the production phase) in terms of technology, which refers to the concept of sustainable production; the product structure of final demand, which refers to the concept of sustainable consumption; and the volume of final demand, which is related to economic growth. We also aim to determine to what extent the technological development and a shift in product structure of the final demand compensate for the growth in final consumption volume. Therefore, we apply structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to the change in raw material consumption (RMC) of the Czech Republic between 2000 and 2007. To present the study in a broader context, we also show other material flow indicators for the Czech Republic for 2000 and 2007.Our findings of SDA show that final demand structure has a very limited effect on the change in material flows. The rapid change in final demand volume was not compensated for crude oil, metal ores, construction materials, food crops, and timber. For the material category of non‐iron metal ores, even the change in technology contributes to an increase in material flows. The largest relative increases are reported for non‐iron metal ores (38%) and construction materials (30%).The main changes in material flows related to the Czech Republic are driven by exports and enabled by imports, the main source of these increased material flows. This emphasizes the increasing role of international trade. | Structural Decomposition Analysis of Raw Material Consumption | Jan Weinzettel and Jan Kovanda | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Case Study
Czech Republic
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
National
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Raw Materials Equivalent (RME)
Single point in time
|
| Material flow accounting in an Irish city-region 1992-2002 This paper aims to measure raw material inputs and waste flows in an Irish city-region in order to analyse (i) whether there was absolute dematerialisation in the particular case study over the period 1992-2002 and (ii) whether material consumption and waste generation were decoupled from economic growth and increases in disposable income over the same period. It was found that the selected material flow indicators showed no evidence of absolute dematerialisation over the given study period, although more recent evidence at the national level suggests that a decline in construction activity and extraction of non-metallic minerals has resulted in an absolute reduction in material consumption and it is likely that this will be mirrored at the system boundary level. It was found that Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) per capita and Direct Material Input (DMI) per capita increased at a faster rate than Domestic Processed Output (DPO) per capita and Direct Material Output (DMO) per capita between 1992 and 2002, which indicates relative decoupling of consumption from waste generation. In addition, it was found that there was relative decoupling of consumption and waste generation from disposable income growth over the study period. Finally, it was found that average DMC and DMI figures for the selected case study were lower than the national averages but broadly similar to results for other city-regions in the European Union (EU). On a methodological note, it was concluded that material flow accounting (MFA) for city-regions in Ireland is constrained due to a lack of disaggregated data for material flows, with the exception of local waste data, and it is recommended that bottom-up analysis should be used to complement disaggregated top-down data. | Material flow accounting in an Irish city-region 1992-2002 | Browne, David; O'Reagan, Bernadette; Moles, Richard | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Case Study
Decoupling
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Time series
UM review paper import
Urban
Waste
Zotero import
|
| Unearthing potentials for decarbonizing the U.S. aluminium cycle Global aluminum demand is anticipated to triple by 2050, by which time global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are advised to be cut 50-85% to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. To explore mitigation strategies systematically, a dynamic material flow model was developed to simulate the stocks and flows of the U.S. aluminum cycle and analyze the corresponding GHG emissions. Theoretical and realistic reduction potentials were identified and quantified. The total GHG emissions for the U.S. aluminum cycle in 2006 amount to 38 Mt CO2-equivalence. However, the U.S. has increasingly relied on imports of aluminum embodied in various products. The in-use stock is still growing fast in most product categories, which limits current scrap availability for recycling and emissions saving. Nevertheless, there is still large emission mitigation potential through recycling. The potentials from '100% old scrap collection' and 'low emission energy' were each calculated to be higher than all process technology potential. Total emissions will decrease dramatically and mitigation priorities will change significantly under a stock saturation situation as much more old scrap becomes available for recycling. The nature of in-use stock development over the coming decades will be decisive for the aluminum industry to reach deeper emission cuts. | Unearthing potentials for decarbonizing the U.S. aluminium cycle | Gang Liu, and Bangs, Colton E, and Müller, Daniel B. | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Emissions (must be merged with Emissions)
Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)
National
Policy
Single point in time
United States
|
| Urban Metabolism in China Achieving Dematerialization and Decarbonization in Suzhou Urban metabolism is a critical component of urban sustainability. On the basis of the driving force−pressure−state−response (DPSR) model and using material flow analysis, this article proposes a framework for sustainable urban management and policy assessment. A case study city in China, Suzhou, illustrates this framework. The results show that resource consumption (excluding water), water consumption, and waste generation (excluding carbon dioxide) in Suzhou after implementation of proposed policies will be 14% lower than 2005 levels, 4.5% higher, and 28.9% higher, respectively, in 2015. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Suzhou will increase by 71.0% in 2015 over 2005 levels, whereas carbon intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of gross domestic product) will decrease by 44.9%. Future pollution control in Suzhou should pay more attention to pollution from vehicles. In addition, goals for relative dematerialization of energy and decarbonization in Suzhou will be achieved before absolute ones are. In the short term, the urban metabolism of Suzhou in 2015 may meet corresponding urban objectives. In the longer term, however, reducing the city's resource demand and waste generation will pose challenges for the sustainability of Suzhou. | Urban Metabolism in China Achieving Dematerialization and Decarbonization in Suzhou | Sai Liang and Tianzhu Zhang | Journal Article | academic | 2011 |
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
UM review paper import
Urban
Waste
Water
|
| Society, energy and materials: the contribution of urban metabolism studies to sustainable urban development issues Urban areas, in particular cities, are significant consumers of materials and energy, either directly on their land areas or indirectly through the materials, goods and services they import or export; there are upstream and downstream consequences of the removal of resources and the discharge of waste materials (to the atmosphere, water and soils), with multiple impacts on the biosphere. The processes involved need to be better characterised to reduce these environmental pressures. This is a sustainable development issue and it is a major goal of a field ecology which has been described as urban, industrial or sometimes territorial. This paper reviews the specific origins and findings of studies on urban metabolism. It describes the analysis tools used, including material and substance flows, energy balances, ecological, water and, more generally, environmental footprints. Finally, recent findings and areas for future research in the dematerialisation of urban societies are summarised. | Society, energy and materials: the contribution of urban metabolism studies ... | Sabine Barles | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Ecological Footprint Analysis (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Urban
|
| Material Flow Indicators in the Czech Republic in Light of the Accession to the European Union This article deals with the economy‐wide material flows in the Czech Republic in 1990–2006. It presents in brief the overall trends of the material flow indicators in 1990–2002. The major part of the article is focused on the years 2002–2006, which immediately preceded and followed the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union in 2004. It is shown that this accession had quite a significant impact on the volume and character of the material flows of the Czech Republic. The accession was beneficial from an economic point of view, as it allowed for an increased supply of materials needed for economic growth. Furthermore, it was accompanied by an improvement in the efficiency of material transformation into economic output. From an environmental and broader sustainability point of view, however, this accession brought about some controversial outcomes. There was a significant increase in the net export of environmental pressure, on one hand, and an increase in net additions to the physical stock of the economy, on the other. Although the former is controversial from the viewpoint of equity in sharing area and resources, the latter places an additional burden on future generations because all physical stocks will turn into waste and emissions at some point, when their life span expires. | Material Flow Indicators in the Czech Republic in Light of ... | Jan Kovanda | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Case Study
Czech Republic
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
National
Time series
|
| Resource use and resource efficiency in the Asia-Pacific region Over the last few decades, the Asia-Pacific region has experienced the most dynamic economic development of any of the world's regions, leading to a rapid increase in resource use and associated emissions. The region is now a major driver towards overshooting global resource use limits. In this paper, we provide an estimate of material use and resource efficiency in the Asia-Pacific region and its sub-regions for the first time, to complement existing knowledge on global resource use. We show that the Asia-Pacific has become the single largest user of resources globally, and that the efficiency of resource use in the region decreased over the period 1970-2005. Furthermore we show that the region's share of total resource use is now so significant that decreasing resource efficiency there has driven a decrease in overall global resource efficiency, for the first time in a century. Using an IPAT framework we found that rising per capita incomes contributed more strongly to growing material use than did population growth. Technology did not moderate material use growth to the extent expected. We argue that a failure to make these issues a central and immediate focus of public policy in the Asia-Pacific region would compromise competitiveness, resource security, and poverty reduction in the region over the medium to long term. | Resource use and resource efficiency in the Asia-Pacific region | Schandl, Heinz and West, Jim | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| Global patterns of materials use: A socioeconomic and geophysical analysis Human use of materials is a major driver of global environmental change. The links between materials use and economic development are central to the challenge of decoupling of materials use and economic growth (dematerialization). This article presents a new global material flow dataset compiled for the year 2000, covering 175 countries, including both extraction and trade flows, and comprising four major material categories: biomass, construction minerals, fossil energy carriers and ores/industrial minerals. First, we quantify the variability and distributional inequality (Gini coefficients) in international material consumption. We then measure the influence of the drivers population, GDP, land area and climate. This analysis yields international income elasticities of material use. Finally, we examine the coupling between material flows, and between income and material productivity, measured in economic production per tonne material consumed. Material productivity is strongly coupled to income, and may thus not be suitable as an international indicator of environmental progress — a finding which we relate to the economic inelasticity of material consumption. The results demonstrate striking differences between the material groups. Biomass is the most equitably distributed resource, economically the most inelastic, and is not correlated to any of the mineral materials. The three mineral material groups are closely coupled to each other and economic activity, indicating that the challenge of dematerializing industrial economies may require fundamental structural transformation. Our analysis provides a first systematic investigation of international differences in material use and their drivers, and thus serves as the basis for more detailed future work. | Global patterns of materials use: A socioeconomic and geophysical analysis | Steinberger, Julia K and Krausmann, Fridolin and Eisenmenger, Nina | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Case Study
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
|
| The physical dimension of international trade: Part 1: Direct global flows between 1962 and 2005 The physical dimension of international trade is attaining increased importance. This article describes a method to calculate complete physical trade flows for all countries which report their trade to the UN. The method is based on the UN Comtrade database and it was used to calculate world-wide physical trade flows for all reporting countries in nine selected years between 1962 and 2005. The results show increasing global trade with global direct material trade flows reaching about 10 billion tonnes in 2005, corresponding to a physical trade volume of about 20 billion tonnes (adding both total imports and total exports). The share from European countries is declining, mainly in favour of Asian countries. The dominant traded commodity in physical units was fossil fuels, mainly oil. Physical trade balances were used to identify the dominant resource suppliers and demanders. Australia was the principal resource supplier over the period with a diverse material export structure. It was followed by mainly oil-exporting countries with varying volumes. As regards to regions, Latin America, south-east Asian islands and central Asia were big resource exporters, mostly with increasing absolute amounts of net exports. The largest net importers were Japan, the United States and single European countries. Emerging countries like the ‘Asian Tigers' with major industrial productive sectors are growing net importers, some of them to an even higher degree than European countries. Altogether, with the major exception of Australia and Canada, industrialized countries are net importers and developing countries and transition countries are net exporters, but there are important differences within these groups. | The physical dimension of international trade: Part 1: Direct global ... | Dittrich, Monika and Bringezu, Stefan | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Imports and Exports
Time series
|
| Options for achieving a 50% cut in industrial carbon emissions by 2050 Carbon emissions from industry are dominated by production of goods in steel, cement, plastic, paper, and aluminum. Demand for these materials is anticipated to double at least by 2050, by which time global carbon emissions must be reduced by at least 50%. To evaluate the challenge of meeting this target, the global flows of these materials and their associated emissions are projected to 2050 under five technical scenarios. A reference scenario includes all existing and emerging efficiency measures but cannot provide sufficient reduction. The application of carbon sequestration to primary production proves to be sufficient only for cement. The emissions target can always be met by reducing demand, for instance through product life extension, material substitution, or 'light-weighting'. Reusing components shows significant potential particularly within construction. Radical process innovation may also be possible. The results show that the first two strategies, based on increasing primary production, cannot achieve the required emissions reductions, so should be balanced by the vigorous pursuit of material efficiency to allow provision of increased material services with reduced primary production. | Options for achieving a 50% cut in industrial carbon emissions ... | Allwood, Julian M and Cullen, Jonathan M and Milford, Rachel L | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Global
Research and Analysis
|
| Local Studies Manual: A researcher's guide for investigating the social metabolism of rural systems This manual provides concepts, methods and variables to describe the biophysical features of rural local systems. Based on the paradigm of social metabolism, we provide a framework for conceptualising and operationalising society-nature interactions for a sustainability analysis at the local level. In other words, the manual offers a systematic understanding of the environmental relations of local communities in terms of their dynamics and metabolic profiles. The emphasis here is on the ‘hardware’ (biophysical elements) side of the social system, and not so much on the ‘software’ (cultural elements). This distinction is based on the premise that social communities are not only cultural entities and systems of communication, but also represent biophysical realities in the sense that they draw materials and energy from the environment in order to maintain or reproduce themselves and their (man-made) artefacts. This throughput of matter and energy is determined for any given social system by the resource base, the mode of production, available technology and lifestyle. They together determine a social community’s sociometabolic profile. | Local Studies Manual: A researcher's guide for investigating the social ... | Singh, Simron J and Ringhofer, Lisa and Haas, Willi and Krausmann, Fridolin and Fischer-Kowalski, Marina | Report | reports | 2010 |
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Practical Guides and Handbooks
Rural
|
| Material flow accounting of an Indian village We are presenting material flow accounting and related indicators for an Indian adivasis village in 1983 (Sarowar, Dangs, Gujarat). It gives a point of comparison with modern nation-wide material flow accounting. The aim is to test the feasibility of indicators of dematerialization of the economy in poor economies. We measured the annual material flows within the Sarowar village (670 inhabitants) in 1982-1983. The method was a combination of surveys, real time measurements, indirect measurements and laboratory dry matter measurements. The results were translated into recent concepts of material flow accounting (MFA), and compared with nation-wide studies. The total material requirement (TMR) of Sarowar (excluding air and water), USA, Japan, Germany and The Netherlands is respectively about 5, 84, 46, 86 and 84 tons per capita per year. The input (all biotic materials are expressed in tons dry matter) totalised 15.8 t DM cap−1 y−1 in Sarowar, which consists mainly of air (11 t cap−1 y−1) and biotic primary materials (4.1 t DM cap−1 y−1). The latest was composed of 29% of pastures, 25% of branches for field burning, 35% of fuel wood, 6% fodder, 1% of construction wood and 4% of grains. The outputs (15.8 t cap−1 y−1) were dominated by CO2 (15.1 t cap−1 y−1). In contrast, the output of The Netherlands (66.8 t cap−1 y−1) is dominated by export with air emissions (19 t cap−1 y−1), export (16 t cap−1 y−1) and embedded export (29 t cap−1 y−1). The apparent eco-efficiency (kg per US dollar, excluding air and water, including hidden flows) is 70, 3, 3, 3 and 3 kg $−1 respectively for Sarowar, Japan, USA, Germany and The Netherlands. The corrected eco-efficiency using Purchasing Power Parity is less contrasted with respectively 18, 3, 3, 4 and 3 kg $−1. Traditional human ecosystem measurements can serve as a basic comparison point, and as a test for dematerialization indicators. The limit of the indicator of eco-efficiency resides in the different degrees of monetization of the economies. In less monetized economies, this indicator is highly biased by the underlying non-market material flows. We discuss the use of ratios of non-substitutable factors in dematerialization assessment and we suggest the use of multi-criteria analysis instead. | Material flow accounting of an Indian village | Bruno Kestemont and Marc Kerkhove | Journal Article | academic | 2010 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Rural
Urban
|
| Material flow accounting of an Indian village We are presenting material flow accounting and related indicators for an Indian adivasis village in 1983 (Sarowar, Dangs, Gujarat). It gives a point of comparison with modern nation-wide material flow accounting. The aim is to test the feasibility of indicators of dematerialization of the economy in poor economies. We measured the annual material flows within the Sarowar village (670 inhabitants) in 1982-1983. The method was a combination of surveys, real time measurements, indirect measurements and laboratory dry matter measurements. The results were translated into recent concepts of material flow accounting (MFA), and compared with nation-wide studies. The total material requirement (TMR) of Sarowar (excluding air and water), USA, Japan, Germany and The Netherlands is respectively about 5, 84, 46, 86 and 84 tons per capita per year. The input (all biotic materials are expressed in tons of dry matter per capita per year) totalised 15,8 t DM cap-1 y-1 in Sarowar, which consists mainly of air (11 t cap-1 y-1) and biotic primary materials (4,1 t DM cap-1 y-1). The latest was composed of 29% of pastures, 25% of branches for field burning, 35% of fuel wood, 6% fodder, 1% of construction wood and 4% of grains. The outputs (15.8 t cap-1 y-1) were dominated by CO2 (15.1 t cap-1 y-1). In contrast, the output of The Netherlands (66.8 t cap-1 y-1) is dominated by export with air emissions (19 t cap-1 y-1), export (16 t cap-1 y-1) and embedded export (29 t cap-1 y-1). The apparent ecoefficiency (kg per US dollar, excluding air and water, including hidden flows) is 70, 3, 3, 3 and 3 kg $-1 respectively for Sarowar, Japan, USA, Germany and The Netherlands. The corrected ecoefficiency using Purchasing Power Parity is less contrasted with respectively 18, 3, 3, 4 and 3 kg $-1. Traditional human ecosystem measurements can serve as a basic comparison point, and as a test for dematerialization indicators. The limit of the indicator of ecoefficiency resides in the different degrees of monetarization of the economies. In less monetarized economies, this indicator is highly biased by the underlying non-market material flows. We discuss the use of ratios of non-substituable factors in dematerialization assessment and we suggest the use of use multicriteria analysis instead. | Material flow accounting of an Indian village | Kestemont, B; Kerkhove, M. | Manuscript | academic | 2010 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Rural
Sub-national
|
| National material flow analysis: Cuba Material Flow Accounting (MFA) is a resource accounting tool based on the concept of social metabolism. This national MFA Cuba investigates the overall structure and dynamics of the Cuban physical economy and its material flows (domestic extraction, imports and exports) between 1970 and 2003 in four main material categories (biomass, non-metallic minerals, metal ores and fossil fuels). The derived material flow indicators domestic extraction (DE), domestic material consumption (DMC), material intensity (MI), physical trade balance (PTB) and their material composition are examined. Further, the interrelationship of material use with economic growth and human development in Cuba between 1970 and 2003 is evaluated. Special attention is given to the structure of its energy system and the disaggregated material flows nickel and sugar cane. Three phases are observed in the development of the physical economy in socio-economic and environmental terms, reflected in most economic and MFA-derived indicators: a period of growth (1970-1989), collapse (1989) and recovery (1990-2003). The structure of the Cuban physical economy is little diversified, specialized in the extraction and export of few raw materials, mainly sugar cane and nickel. Domestic extraction comprises mainly biomass (70%) and minerals (20%). Biomass accounts for 25% of the physical imports and 60%-90% of the physical exports between 1970 and 2003. The domestic primary energy supply is based on fossil fuel imports, mainly crude oil and oil products, comprising 70% of all physical imports. From a global perspective the ecological footprint and per capita energy consumption is relatively low. | National material flow analysis: Cuba | Susanna Eisenhut | Thesis | theses | 2009 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Domestic extraction (DE)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| Assessment of total urban metabolism and metabolic inefficiency in an Irish city-region This paper aims to measure product and waste flows in an Irish city-region using the principles of metabolism and mass balance. An empirical indicator to measure resource efficiency, using a ratio of waste disposal as a function of product consumption, was developed and it was found that total materials metabolic inefficiency fell by 31% from 0.13 in 1996 to 0.09 in 2002. The paper concludes by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this indicator and its potential application in the field of sustainable consumption and resource efficiency as well as making suggestions to improve and strengthen the indicator. | Assessment of total urban metabolism and metabolic inefficiency in an ... | Browne, David; O’Regan, Bernadette; Moles, Richard | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
UM review paper import
Urban
Waste
|
| Linking material and energy flow analyses and social theory The paper explores the potential of Habermas' theory of communicative action to alter the social reflexivity of material and energy flow analysis. With his social macro theory Habermas has provided an alternative, critical justification for social theory that can be distinguished from economic libertarianism and from political liberalism. Implicitly, most flow approaches draw from these theoretical traditions rather than from discourse theory. There are several types of material and energy flow analyses. While these concepts basically share a system theoretical view, they lack a specific interdisciplinary perspective that ties the fundamental insight of flows to disciplinary scientific development. Instead of simply expanding micro-models to the social macro-dimension social theory suggests infusing the very notion of flows to the progress of disciplines. With regard to the functional integration of society, material and energy flow analyses can rely on the paradigm of ecological economics and at the same time progress the debate between strong and weak sustainability within the paradigm. However, placing economics at the centre of their functional analyses may still ignore the broader social integration of society, depending on their pre-analytic outline of research and the methods used. | Linking material and energy flow analyses and social theory | Schiller, Frank | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Energy/Emergy
Method
|
| Using Material Flow Analysis to Illuminate Long-Term Waste Management Solutions in Oahu, Hawaii Home to the capital city and nearly a million people, the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii, USA, is highly dependent on external resources. Over the past decade, large-scale agricultural production has diminished dramatically, leaving the island greatly reliant on imports for food and most other basic goods. A strong tourism sector and high levels of affluence contribute to per capita municipal waste generation rates exceeding all other U.S. states. The only municipal landfill requires immediate expansion if it is to remain in operation, and it has proven extremely difficult to find additional disposal sites. An island-wide material flow analysis (MFA) was performed as an innovative means of considering issues of import, export, consumption, and substitution, resulting in long-term strategies for diminishing the generation of waste that could complement current local conservation and recycling efforts. The findings indicate several opportunities for using domestic waste resources to substitute for imports and simultaneously reduce waste generation, particularly for construction materials. Legislative constraints and possible changes in this regard are also considered. Although past efforts by both the city and state governments to encourage on-island recycling and reuse have not achieved set goals, the MFA results suggest numerous opportunities that could be pursued to increase material self-sufficiency and/or reduce waste disposal by several hundred thousand short tons, enhancing the long-term sustainability of the island. | Using Material Flow Analysis to Illuminate Long-Term Waste Management Solutions ... | Eckelman, Matthew J and Chertow, Marian R | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Single point in time
Sub-national
|
| Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) Compilation Guide 2009 | Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) Compilation Guide 2009 | EUROSTAT | Document | reports | 2009 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Practical Guides and Handbooks
|
| National material flow analysis [Cuba] Material Flow Accounting (MFA) is a resource accounting tool based on the concept of social metabolism. This national MFA Cuba investigates the overall structure and dynamics of the Cuban physical economy and its material flows (domestic extraction, imports and exports) between 1970 and 2003 in four main material categories (biomass, non-metallic minerals, metal ores and fossil fuels). The derived material flow indicators domestic extraction (DE), domestic material consumption (DMC), material intensity (MI), physical trade balance (PTB) and their material composition are examined. Further, the interrelationship of material use with economic growth and human development in Cuba between 1970 and 2003 is evaluated. Special attention is given to the structure of its energy system and the disaggregated material flows nickel and sugar cane. Three phases are observed in the development of the physical economy in socio-economic and environmental terms, reflected in most economic and MFA-derived indicators: a period of growth (1970-1989), collapse (1989) and recovery (1990-2003). The structure of the Cuban physical economy is little diversified, specialized in the extraction and export of few raw materials, mainly sugar cane and nickel. Domestic extraction comprises mainly biomass (70%) and minerals (20%). Biomass accounts for 25% of the physical imports and 60%-90% of the physical exports between 1970 and 2003. The domestic primary energy supply is based on fossil fuel imports, mainly crude oil and oil products, comprising 70% of all physical imports. From a global perspective the ecological footprint and per capita energy consumption is relatively low. | National material flow analysis [Cuba] | Eisenhut, Susanna | Thesis | theses | 2009 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Domestic extraction (DE)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
National
|
| Environmental Impact of the use of Natural Resources and Products | Environmental Impact of the use of Natural Resources and Products | van der Voet, Ester and van Oers, Lauran and de Bruyn, Sander and de Jong, Femke and Tukker, Arnold | Book | academic | 2009 |
Case Study
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Ecological Footprint Analysis (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
Method
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Practical Guides and Handbooks
|
| Analysis of regional material flows: The case of the Czech Republic This article deals with regional material flows and the related environmental pressures and impacts in the Czech Republic. We assess the regional domestic extraction used for groups of materials (DE) such as biomass, fossil fuels, non-metallic minerals and metal ores and examine the inter-regional trade in these materials in terms of physical imports (IMr), physical exports (EXr) and physical trade balance (PTBr). We further discuss the significance of various material flow indicators including DMI and DMC, their relations to other socio-economic variables and their possible application in policies. We argue that more effort should be put into developing indicators presenting imports and exports in raw material equivalents (RME). | Analysis of regional material flows: The case of the Czech ... | Kovanda, Jan and Weinzettel, Jan and Hak, Tomas | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Domestic extraction (DE)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Raw Materials Equivalent (RME)
Single point in time
Sub-national
UM review paper import
|
| Urban Metabolism of Paris and Its Region The article presents the results of a research project aimed at (1) examining the feasibility of material flow analysis (MFA) on a regional and urban scale in France, (2) selecting the most appropriate method, (3) identifying the available data, and (4) calculating the material balance for a specific case. Using the Eurostat method, the study was conducted for the year 2003 and for three regional levels: Paris, Paris and its suburbs, and the entire region. Applying the method on a local scale required two local indicators to be defined in order to take into account the impact of exported wastes on MFA: LEPO, local and exported flows to nature, and DMCcorr, a modified domestic material consumption (DMC) that excludes exported wastes (and imported ones if necessary).As the region extracts, produces, and transforms less material than the country as a whole, its direct material input (DMI) is lower than the national DMI. In all the areas, LEPO exceeds 50% of DMI; in contrast, recycling is very low. The multiscale approach reveals that urban metabolism is strongly impacted by density and the distribution of activities: the dense city center (Paris) exports all of its wastes to the other parts of the region and concentrates food consumption, whereas the agricultural and urban sprawl area consumes high levels of construction materials and fuel. This supports the use of MFA on an urban and regional scale as a basis for material flow management and dematerialization strategies and clearly reveals the important interactions between urban and regional planning and development, and material flows. | Urban Metabolism of Paris and Its Region | Sabine Barles | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
Sub-national
UM review paper import
Urban
Zotero import
Zotero2
|
| Assessing Socioeconomic Metabolism Through Hybrid Life Cycle Assessment This article applies a combined input−output and life cycle inventory (LCI) method to the calculation of emissions and material requirements of the Czech economy in 2003. The main focus is on materials and emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic. Emissions and material extraction avoided due to imports are calculated according to an input−output approach that assumes the same production technology for imports as for domestic production. Because not all products are provided by the domestic economy, the LCI data are incorporated into the monetary input−output model.The results show that incorporating the LCI data into an input−output model is reasonable. The emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic are comparable to the domestic emissions. We compare the economy‐wide material flow indicators, such as direct material input, domestic material consumption, and physical trade balance, to their raw material equivalents. The results of our calculation show that the Czech Republic exerts environmental pressure on the environment in other countries through international trade.We argue that raw material equivalents should be used to express the flows across national boundaries. Furthermore, we recommend a raw material consumption indicator for international comparisons. | Assessing Socioeconomic Metabolism Through Hybrid Life Cycle Assessment | Jan Weinzettel and Jan Kovanda | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Case Study
Czech Republic
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
National
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Raw Materials Equivalent (RME)
Single point in time
|
| Urban metabolism: Methodological Advances in Urban Material Flow Accounting Based on the Lisbon Case Study Urban metabolism studies have been established for only a few cities worldwide, and difficulties obtaining adequate statistical data are universal. Constraints and peculiarities call for innovative methods to quantify the materials entering and leaving city boundaries. Such methods include the extrapolation of data at the country or the region level based, namely, on sales, population, commuters, workers, and waste produced. The work described in this article offers a new methodology developed specifically for quantifying urban material flows, making possible the regular compilation of data pertinent to the characterization of a city's metabolism. This methodology was tested in a case study that characterized the urban metabolism of the city of Lisbon by quantifying Lisbon's material balance for 2004. With this aim, four variables were characterized and linked to material flows associated with the city: absolute consumption of materials/products per category, throughput of materials in the urban system per material category, material intensity of economic activities, and waste flows per treatment technology. Results show that annual material consumption in Lisbon totals 11.223 million tonnes (20 tonnes per capita), and material outputs sum 2.149 million tonnes. Nonrenewable resources represent almost 80% of the total material consumption, and renewables consumption (biomass) constitutes only 18% of the total consumption. The remaining portion is made up of nonspecified materials. A seemingly excessive consumption amount of nonrenewable materials compared to renewables may be the result of a large investment in building construction and a significant shift toward private car traveling, to the detriment of public transportation. | Urban metabolism: Methodological Advances in Urban Material Flow Accounting Based ... | Niza, Samuel and Rosado, Leonardo and Ferrão, Paulo | Journal Article | academic | 2009 |
Case Study
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
UM review paper import
Urban
Zotero import
|
| Linking Waste and Material Flows on the Island of Oahu, Hawai'i: The Search for Sustainable Solutions This report includes the following chapters: chapter 1: introduction chapter 2: Oahu overview chapter 3: imports chapter 4: on-island extraction and production chapter 5: material use and conversion chapter 6: exports chapter 7: waste chapter 8: issues and opportunities chapter 9: conclusions | Linking Waste and Material Flows on the Island of Oahu, ... | Eckelman, Matthew and Chertow, Marian R | Report | reports | 2009 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
|
| Metabolism of Neighborhoods Analysis of urban metabolism has been established as an appropriate approach for assessing the sustainability of cities. A desirable next step is to use the metabolism as a guide to designing more sustainable cities. This study provides an analysis of the metabolism of four representative Toronto neighborhoods. The annual energy consumption for buildings and transport is determined to be from 57 to 107 GJ/capita and from 0.5 to 9.2 GJ/capita, respectively. The annual consumption of food and water is found to be 1,100 and 92,300 kg/capita. The findings of the study have implications for the design of sustainable neighborhoods. This includes the construction of energy-efficient buildings, development of public transit, and encouragement of residents to replace inefficient water fixtures. More advanced methods might consist of growing the urban forest using nutrients from wastewater, and converting solar energy to building operational energy. | Metabolism of Neighborhoods | Codoban, Natalia and Kennedy, Christopher | Journal Article | academic | 2008 |
Canada
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Toronto
Urban
|
| Economy-wide material flow indicators in the Czech Republic: trends, decoupling analysis and uncertainties Material and energy flows (together with human appropriation of land) are considered the key cause of environmental problems. This paper describes the application of economy-wide material flow accounting and analysis to the economy of the Czech Republic for 1990-2002. The results show a decrease of material intensity and decoupling of the economic growth from environmental pressure. The second part of the paper treats an important issue of uncertainties related to economy-wide material flow indicators in the Czech Republic. The results point out that the high uncertainties related to some material flow indicators may be an obstacle to their applicability. | Economy-wide material flow indicators in the Czech Republic: trends, decoupling ... | Kovanda, Jan and Hak, Tomas and Janacek, Jiri | Journal Article | academic | 2008 |
Case Study
Czech Republic
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| Measuring the ecological performance of cities and territories: the metabolism of Paris and Ile-de-France Excerpt from introduction: The objective of this work is therefore to establish the Parisian and Parisian metabolism by first focusing on the flow of raw materials, based on the standardized method proposed by the European Commission's statistical services (EUROSTAT). Such an approach requires the location and collection of a large number of relatively sparse data, not always spatialized. The implementation of the analysis matrix is therefore one of the main tasks to be accomplished, the idea being to lay the foundations of a long-term analysis framework, of an easy update, allowing to follow in the time the evolution of the Parisian metabolism. One of the challenges is to define the spatial framework of this analysis, since, while the administrative boundaries of the City of Paris itself constitute a permanent framework since 1860, those of the Paris agglomeration as a whole are shifting and more difficult to to stare. Extrait de l'introduction: L’objectif de ce travail est donc d’établir le métabolisme parisien et francilien en mettant dans un premier temps l’accent sur les flux de matières brutes, sur la base de la méthode standardisée proposée par les services de statistique de la Commission Européenne (EUROSTAT). Une telle démarche nécessite la localisation et la collecte d’un nombre important de données relativement éparses, pas toujours spatialisées. La mise en place de la matrice d’analyse constitue donc l’une des principales tâches à accomplir, l’idée étant de poser les bases d’un cadre d’analyse pérenne, d’une mise à jour aisée, permettant de suivre dans le temps l’évolution du métabolisme parisien. L’un des enjeu est de définir le cadre spatial de cette analyse, puisque, si les limites administratives de la Ville de Paris proprement dite constituent un cadre pérenne depuis 1860, celles de l’agglomération parisienne dans son ensemble sont mouvantes et plus difficiles à fixer. | Measuring the ecological performance of cities and territories: the metabolism ... | Barles, Sabine | Report | reports | 2007 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Paris
Urban
|
| Material Flows and Economic Growth in Developing China The concept of sustainable development concerns not only the natural environment but also human societies and economies. The method of economy‐wide materials flow accounting and analysis (EW‐MFA) is internationally recognized as a valuable tool for studying the physical dimensions of economies. EW‐MFA has been carried out in many industrialized countries, but very little work has been done for developing China; this article can be regarded as one of the first attempts to study China's economy in terms of materials flows. In this article we have compiled materials flow accounts for China during the time series 1990 to 2002 and derived indicators associated with international comparison. Results show that the annual material consumption of China's economy continuously increased except for a slump around 1998, whereas the material efficiency exhibited a three‐phase trend reflecting different macropolicies of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Five‐Year Plans implemented by the central government. Based on this experience with EW‐MFA for China, suggestions for methodology development and further research are given for improving EW‐MFA as a more effective tool for environmental management. | Material Flows and Economic Growth in Developing China | Ming XU and Tianzhu ZHANG | Journal Article | academic | 2007 |
Case Study
China
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| Calculation of the 'Net Additions to Stock' Indicator for the Czech Republic Using a Direct Method Net additions to stock (NAS) are an indicator based on economy-wide material flow accounting and analysis. NAS, a measure of the physical growth rate of an economy, can be used for estimates of future waste flows. It is calculated using two methods: The indirect method of calculation is a simple difference between all input and output flows, whereas the direct method involves measuring the amounts of materials added to particular categories of physical stock and the amounts of waste flows from these stocks. The study described in this article had one leading objective: to make available direct NAS data for the Czech Republic, which could later be used for predicting future waste flows. Two additional objectives emerged from the first: (1) to develop a method for direct NAS calculation from data availability in the Czech Republic; (2) to calculate NAS directly, compare the results with those achieved in indirect NAS calculation, and discuss the identified differences. The NAS for the Czech Republic calculated by the direct method is equal to approximately 65 million tonnes on average in 2000-2002 and is approximately 27% lower than the NAS acquired by the indirect method of calculation. The actual values of directly calculated NAS and its uncertainties suggest that the indirect NAS is more likely to be an overestimation than an underestimation. Durables account for about 2% of the total direct NAS, whereas the rest is attributed to infrastructure and buildings. The direct NAS is dominated by nonmetal construction commodities such as building stone and bricks, which equal approximately 89% of the total direct NAS. Calculation of NAS by the direct method has been proved to be feasible in the Czech Republic. Moreover, uncertainties related to direct NAS are lower than those related to indirectly acquired NAS. | Calculation of the 'Net Additions to Stock' Indicator for the ... | Jan Kovanda | Journal Article | academic | 2007 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
Material Stock Analysis (MSA)
National
|
| Regional Patterns in Global Resource Extraction 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. | Regional Patterns in Global Resource Extraction | Heinz Schandl and Nina Eisenmenger | Journal Article | academic | 2006 |
Biomass
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Fossil Fuels
Global
Metals
Minerals
National
Single point in time
|
| Economy-wide Material Flow Accounting "Guide for beginners" This is a very useful hands-on guide that illustrates how to perform an Economy-wide Material Flow Analysis. Instructions, detailed examples, and descriptions on how to tackle each of the categories are included, broken down by table (referring to the Eurostat spreadsheet): Table A: Domestic Extraction Table B and C: Imports and Exports Table D: Domestic Processed Output (DPO) Finally, a section on indicators sheds more light on how to calculate and use those This particular version is the "Draft version November 2006", included in a list of documents on the CIRCABC section of the European Commission website. Whether or not a final version is available is unclear. | Economy-wide Material Flow Accounting "Guide for beginners" | Eisenmenger, Nina and Haas, Willi and Krausmann, Fridolin and Schütz, Helmut and Weisz, Helga | Report | reports | 2006 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
|
| Trade, Materials Flows, and Economic Development in the South: The Example of Chile Materials flow analysis (MFA) is internationally recognized as a key tool to assess the biophysical metabolism of societies and to provide aggregated indicators for environmental pressures of human activities. Economy-wide MFAs have been compiled for a number of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, but so far very few studies exist for countries in the South. In this article, the first materials-flow-based indicators for Chile are presented. The article analyzes the restructuring of the Chilean economy toward an active integration in the world markets from the perspective of natural resource use in a time series from 1973 to 2000. Special emphasis is placed on the assessment of materials flows related to Chile’s international trade relations. Results show that material inputs to the Chilean economy increased by a factor of 6, mainly as a result of the promotion of resource-intensive exports from the mining, fruit growing, forestry, and fishery sectors. At more than 40 tons, Chile’s resource use per capita at present is one of the highest in the world. The article addresses the main shortcomings of the MFA approach, such as weight-based aggregation and the missing links between environmental pressures and impacts, and gives suggestions for methodological improvements and possible extensions of the MFA framework, with the intent of developing MFA into a more powerful tool for policy use. | Trade, Materials Flows, and Economic Development in the South: The ... | Stefan Giljum | Journal Article | academic | 2004 |
Case Study
Chile
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| Material flow accounting of Spain Material throughput is a means of measuring the so-called social metabolism, or physical dimensions of a society's consumption, and can be taken as an indirect and approximate indicator of sustainability. Material flow accounting can be used to test the dematerialisation hypothesis, the idea that technological progress causes a decrease in total material used (strong dematerialisation) or material used per monetary unit of output (weak dematerialisation). This paper sets out the results of a material flow analysis for Spain for the period from 1980 to 2000. The analysis reveals that neither strong nor weak dematerialisation took place during the period analysed. Although the population did not increase considerably, materials mobilised by the Spanish economy (DMI) increased by 85% in absolute terms, surpassing GDP growth. In addition, Spain became more dependent on external trade in physical terms. In fact, its imports are more than twice the amount of its exports in terms of weight. | Material flow accounting of Spain | Cañellas, Sílvia and González, Ana Citlalic and Puig, Ignasi and Russi, Daniela and Sendra, Cristina and Sojo, Amalia | Journal Article | academic | 2004 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Time series
|
| In the Sea of Influence: A World System Perspective of the Nicobar Islands From a “world system” perspective, this monograph describes the processes by which the Nicobar Islands became integrated into the global economy. Situated some 1,200 km off the east coast of India in the Bay of Bengal, the islands are home to an indigenous population of approximately 40,000 inhabitants who draw their sustenance from horticulture, pig rearing, fishing and, more recently, copra production. The location of the Nicobar Islands on an ancient trade route to southeast Asia has had inevitable consequences for both the inhabitants and the islands’ ecology; the pace of change increasing with the European colonisation of Asia. The islands are no longer a source of food and shelter to passing vessels as they used to be in former times, but are positioned, despite present protectionist measures, on the disadvantaged side of an exploitative relationship through an unequal exchange of resources within the modern world system. In drawing linkages between the world system perspective and environmental change, this monograph emphasises a shift from monetary indicators to biophysical indicators. Based on archival material and prolonged fieldwork, the monograph is a first detailed account of the colonial and economic history of the Nicobar Islands, and hence of interest not only to the scientific community, but to the general reader as well. | In the Sea of Influence: A World System Perspective of ... | Singh, Simron J. | Book | academic | 2003 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Environmental justice
Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP)
Island
Sub-national
|
| Materials Flow Accounting in Sweden Material Use for National Consumption and for Export This article presents Swedish economy‐wide material flow accounts for the period 1987‐1998. It also shows possibilities for enhancing the international comparability of aggregated data on material use, by distinguishing between materials used for consumption and export purposes. The direct material input (DMI) is used as an aggregate measure to estimate the amounts of natural resources (except water and air) that are taken from nature into the economy within a year, including imports to and production within the region in question. The division of materials used for consumption and export purposes avoids double counting trade flows when DMI is applied to a group of countries.The annual DMI in Sweden for 1997‐1998, including production and imports, amounts to 24 to 27 metric tons per capita (t/c). The fossil fuel input varies only slightly over the period, from 3.2 t/c in 1991 to 3.6 t/c in 1996, a level deemed unsustainable by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The input of renewable raw materials varies between 8 and 9 t/c. Ores and minerals vary between 11 and 15 t/c. The DMI puts Sweden above estimates made for Germany, the United States, and Japan and in the same range as the Netherlands. The differences in these values can mainly be explained by the relative importance of exports as compared to the size of the economy and by the variation in system boundaries for the data on natural resources. The system boundaries and data sources for natural resources need to be further defined to make the measures fully comparable. Around 5 t/c is exported, whereas the rest, around 20 t/c, is national consumption.The aggregate direct material consumption (DMC), which is the DMI minus exports, communicates the magnitude of resource use. Comparisons of the input with solid waste statistics indicate that quantity of waste (excluding mining waste) in Sweden is equal to about 10% relative of the total resource use. Material collected for recycling by the waste management system is equal to about 5% of the amount of virgin resources brought into society each year. | Materials Flow Accounting in Sweden Material Use for National Consumption ... | Viveka Palm and Kristina Jonsson | Journal Article | academic | 2003 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Sweden
Time series
|
| Environmental Relations and Biophysical Transitions: The Case of Trinket Island To what extent is an island economy cut off from the rest of the world? Defined as a mass of land bounded by water, island societies connect and exchange with their surroundings rather intensely. Based on empirical research, this paper explores the role of a ‘remote' island society on Trinket in generating or sheltering itself from the process of globalisation in which con-textually given borders are transgressed and displaced. To this end, we apply the concepts of societal metabolism and colonising natural processes operationalised by Material and Energy Flow Analysis (MEFA), and Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) respectively. Using these biophysical indicators, we describe the transition from a metabolism based upon the natural environment to metabolism based on exchange with other societies. Data presented in this paper further reveal a process of industrialisation and integration into the global market of a so-called ‘closed' and ‘inaccessible' island society. | Environmental Relations and Biophysical Transitions: The Case of Trinket Island | Singh, Simron J. and Grünbühel, Clemens M. | Journal Article | academic | 2003 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
India
Island
Rural
Single point in time
|
| Material Flow Analysis of the City of Hamburg In this paper we present first results of a local MFA for the City of Hamburg. Material flows have been accounted for the years 1992-2001. Material input and consumption indicators for Hamburg increased during this last ten years. Material flows are almost overall dominated by imports and a big share of the imports is re-exported again showing the role of Hamburg as an international harbour. Material consumption per capita and per GDP is lower in Hamburg than in overall Germany. But different to Germany where material inputs and consumption stayed stable in per capita terms and declined in relation to GDP in Hamburg material inputs and consumption per capita and per GDP increased. | Material Flow Analysis of the City of Hamburg | Hammer, Mark and Giljum, Stefan and Hinterberger, Friedrich | Conference Paper | None | 2003 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Germany
Hamburg
Urban
|
| Material flow accounting and analysis: A Valuable Tool for Analyses of Society-Nature Interrelationships This paper aims at summarizing methodological foundations and the state of the art in the rapidly emerging field of material flow accounting and analysis (MFA). 1. Introduction 2. Historical development of MFA 3. Methodological foundations 4. Categories of material flows 5. A general scheme for economy-wide MFA 6. Indicators derived from economy-wide MFA 7. The LCA-oriented method for calculating indirect material flows 8. The input-output based approach for calculating indirect flows 9. Main applications of economy-wide MFA 10. Shortcomings of the MFA approach 11. State of the art in economy-wide MFA 12. Selected empirical results 13. Extensions and further methodological development of MFA | Material flow accounting and analysis: A Valuable Tool for Analyses ... | Hinterberger, Friedrich and Giljum, Stefan and Hammer, Mark | Document | reports | 2003 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Review Paper
|
| Rationale for and Interpretation of Economy-Wide Materials Flow Analysis and Derived Indicators Economy‐wide material flow analysis (MFA) and derived indicators have been developed to monitor and assess the metabolic performance of economies, that is, with respect to the internal economic flows and the exchange of materials with the environment and with other economies. Indicators such as direct material input (DMI) and direct material consumption (DMC) measure material use related to either production or consumption. Domestic hidden flows (HF) account for unused domestic extraction, and foreign HF represent the upstream primary resource requirements of the imports. DMI and domestic and foreign HF account for the total material requirement (TMR) of an economy. Subtracting the exports and their HF provides the total material consumption (TMC).DMI and TMR are used to measure the (de‐) coupling of resource use and economic growth, providing the basis for resource efficiency indicators. Accounting for TMR allows detection of shifts from domestic to foreign resource requirements. Net addition to stock (NAS) measures the physical growth of an economy. It indicates the distance from flow equilibrium of inputs and outputs that may be regarded as a necessary condition of a sustainable mature metabolism.We discuss the extent to which MFA‐based indicators can also be used to assess the environmental performance. For that purpose we consider different impacts of material flows, and different scales and perspectives of the analysis, and distinguish between turnover‐based indicators of generic environmental pressure and impact‐based indicators of specific environmental pressure. Indicators such as TMR and TMC are regarded as generic pressure indicators that may not be used to indicate specific environmental impacts. The TMR of industrial countries is discussed with respect to the question of whether volume and composition may be regarded as unsustainable. | Rationale for and Interpretation of Economy-Wide Materials Flow Analysis and ... | Stefan Bringezu | Journal Article | academic | 2003 |
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Indicators - general
Research and Analysis
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| Material use in the European Union 1980-2000: indicators and analysis Since the notion of sustainability began to gain influence in the environmental discourse a decade ago, the features of this discourse have changed remarkably. The focus moved from the output side of the production system to a complete understanding of the physical dimension of the economy. In this view, the economy was conceptualised as an activity, as a process of extracting materials from nature, transforming them, keeping them as society's stock for a certain amount of time and, at the end of the production-consumption chain, disposing of them again in nature. It has been recognised that environmental problems can arise at every step in this process. Furthermore, it has been understood that not only problematic substances but also problematic amounts of matter set in motion by society's activities result in environmental problems. These insights have induced new approaches to environmental accounting, in particular material flow accounting, which focuses on the „physical economy' in a comprehensive and integrative manner. Economy- wide material flow accounts (MFAs) are consistent compilations of the overall material throughput of economies. MFAs cover their focal subject completely and allow for extensive and flexible secondary analysis as well as for the compilation of aggregate summary indicators. For some years now, Eurostat and the Member States have been developing economy-wide material flow accounts (German Federal Statistical Office 1995, 2000, Schandl at al. 2000, Gerhold et al. 2000, Muukkonen 2000, Isacsson et al. 2000, DETR/ONS/WI 2001). Two international co-operations on material flow accounting under the leadership of the World Resources Institute (Adriaanse et al. 1997, Matthews et al. 2000) and the publication in 2001 of „Economy-wide material flow accounts and derived indicators - a methodological guide' (Eurostat 2001b) were major steps towards methodological harmonisation. The European Environmental Agency (EEA) published first estimates of aggregate material indicators (TMR and DMI) for the EU in its indicator report „Environmental signals 2000' (EEA 1999). The Wuppertal Institute produced a first estimate of aggregate material use in the EU covering the period 1980-1997 for Eurostat and DG Environment (Eurostat 2001a). The report „Environmental signals 2002 - Benchmarking the millennium' (EEA 2002) includes data on TMR for 1980-1997. An indicator for material consumption is included in the 2001 UN CSD List of Sustainable Development Indicators. The objectives of this report are: (1) to present the results of the revised and updated 1980-2000 version of the initial 1980-1997 economy- wide material flow account for the European Union compiled by the Wuppertal Institute (Eurostat 2001a). (2) (3) to take a first step towards identifying factors that explain the differences and changes in material use at an aggregate as well as detailed level, cross-country and cross-time. to describe the data sources and procedures applied, and to explain and justify the revisions made. The indicators for material use that were compiled include: § Domestic extraction (DE): all materials (biomass, fossil fuels, minerals) extracted for use in a country, § § § Direct material input (DMI): DE plus imported materials, Domestic material consumption (DMC): DMI less exported materials Physical trade balance (PTB): materials imported less materials exported (synonymous with net imports or net trade). The key goal of this revision and update was to improve data quality and comparability for the indicators considered most important and most developed in terms of data quality and meaningfulness for policy at present. These are DMC, DMI, and PTB (see Eurostat 2001b). TMR (Total material requirement), DPO (domestic processed output), and NAS (net additions to stock) were not compiled for the new estimate. | Material use in the European Union 1980-2000: indicators and analysis | Eurostat | Report | reports | 2002 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Time series
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| Material Flow Accounting in Amazonia: A Tool for Sustainable Development This report presents experiences from a research project carried out by members of IFF-Social Ecology in conjunction with researchers from Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia. It demonstrates the application of Material Flow Accounting (MFA) tools in the region of Amazonia. The tools are tested for their ability to generate data in a series of cases, but also for their explanatory power of making a meaningful contribution to information systems on sustainability in the region. The concept and approach are briefly discussed, followed by a lengthy presentation of research results and data gaps for each of the studies. The research follows a multi-level approach by applying the MFA methodology to the national level as well as to local-level case-studies. While both perspectives generate results in their own right, the combination of insights leads to a fuller understanding of issues involved when assessing sustainability policies in such a diverse area. While national studies provide structural reasons for the relative de-linking of material intensity and industrial growth in wealthy nations, Amazonian economies are identified as extractive economies, structurally unable to decrease exporting materially intensive raw materials. Local-level studies investigate micro-structures producing their own sustainability issues. Subsistence societies coping with rapid change and approaching industrialization show distinct characteristics in their material resource management, depending on respective histories, geographical place or position in the wider national/political economy. | Material Flow Accounting in Amazonia: A Tool for Sustainable Development | Amann, Christof and Bruckner, Willibald and Fischer-Kowalski, Marina and Grünbühel, Clemens | Report | reports | 2002 |
Bolivia
Brazil
Case Study
Colombia
Direct Material Consumption (DMC)
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
Single point in time
UM review paper import
Venezuela
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| A handbook of industrial ecology | A handbook of industrial ecology | Ayres, Robert U and Ayres, Leslie | Book | academic | 2002 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Method
Physical input-output tables (PIOT) / Input-Output Assessment (IOA)
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Uncertainty
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| Material Flow Accounting of Greater London This dissertation quantifies the society's metabolism of Greater London in terms of material. Therefore a method for a region al material flow accounting (MFA) was developed and subsequently the accounting wa s carried out. The developed method agrees with the suggestions that are stated in th e Eurostat publication 'Economy-wide material flow accounts and derived indicators' (Europ ean Commission: Eurostat, 2001). Going into detail, various new approaches were develope d to generate a consis tent data file. The results of the accounting can be compared to nation-wide MFA that are done with the Eurostat method. After describing the theoretical basics of society's metabolism and material flow accounting, it was on the one hand im portant to describe the vari ous procedures to generate practicable datasets. On the other hand the results of the material flow accounting are discussed within the context of London as a Gl obal City that is in physical dimensions dependent on a national and world economy. The accounting is carried out for the most recent year for which data is available, the year 2000. It was not possible to cover a whole period of time, because of too much workload, the lack of exact datasets and limited time. Accounted are only the direct and the used flows. The latter are anyway of major impo rtance for the metabolism of a city since Domestic Extraction is almost not existent. Eq uivalent datasets for other regions in the United Kingdom are available so that the de veloped method could be useful for other regional case studies. The results show that London has, compared to national economies, high exports per capita, moderate imports per capita and very low Domestic Extraction. Waste is in large quantities exported and approxima tely 90 per cent of the used water is imported. Those facts show the dependence of a city on its environing other social systems and nature. Furthermore the Domestic Material Consump tion is in comparison to national economies very low and indicates that a global city like London has externalised the material intensive processes (but still relies on their products and outcomes). The material flows (excluding water and oxygen) are presen ted in the figure below. To create a complete picture of London's metabolism the calcul ation of the indirect flows and an energy flow accounting for the social system Greater London could be of interest since only a very small amount of sec ondary energy is generated within London. | Material Flow Accounting of Greater London | Bongardt, Benjamin | Thesis | theses | 2002 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Single point in time
Urban
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| Economy-wide material flow accounts and derived indicators: a methodological guide This guide presents a framework and practical guidance for establishing material flow accounts and material balances for a whole economy. Material flow accounts and balances, as described in the Introduction, are being compiled in a number of Member States. The guide is a first step towards harmonised terminology, concepts and a set of accounts and tables for compilers at national level. This publication is one of the outputs of Eurostat's Environmental Accounting work. It contributes to various EU-wide and international activities in the context of national and environmental accounting, including the revision of the United Nations' System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA). The publication was prepared by Mr H. Schütz of the Wuppertal Institute and Mr A. Steurer of Eurostat B1. 1.01 This Guide focuses on material flow accounts (MFA) and balances for a whole economy. These economy-wide material flow accounts and balances show the amounts of physical inputs into an economy, material accumulation in the economy and outputs to other economies or back to nature as illustrated by Figure 1. 1.02 Most statistical institutes in Europe have the experience and data needed to compile economy-wide MFA and balances (see Eurostat 1997). Work at Eurostat includes projects on the policy use of material flow information, physical input-output tables and economy-wide MFA and balances. Since the first economy-wide MFA and balances for Austria (Steurer 1992) and Japan (Environmental Protection Agency 1992) many researchers and statisticians have used similar approaches. Within the EU, economy-wide MFA are now available for Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. 1.03 Research has advanced in recent years and standard concepts and formats are evolving. The European Commission funded ConAccount project (1996-1997) and the international projects leading to the publication of ‘Resource Flows: the material basis of industrial economies' (Adriaanse et al 1997) and ‘The Weight of Nations - material outflows from industrial economies' (Matthews et al 2000) were important steps towards internationally comparable data based on harmonised approaches. | Economy-wide material flow accounts and derived indicators: a methodological guide | Eurostat | Report | reports | 2001 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Practical Guides and Handbooks
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| Material Flow Analysis, Vision and Reality No abstract is available for this article. | Material Flow Analysis, Vision and Reality | Brunner, Paul H. | Journal Article | academic | 2001 |
Commentary / Editorial
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Substance Flow Analysis (SFA)
Zotero import
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| Materials Flow Analysis of the Italian Economy This article analyzes the mass of the materials that flowed through the Italian economy during 1994 and compares the results with a similar analysis of Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States published by a collaboration headed by the World Resources Institute. In order to perform this comparison, we have evaluated the mass of the materials produced within the country and the mass of the imported materials and commodities. For the domestic production, imports and exports, we have also evaluated the mass of the materials that accompany—as “hidden flows”—each physical flow.Our analysis indicates that, in 1994, Italy experienced total material requirements (TMR) of 1,609 million metric tons (Mt), of which 727 Mt was used as direct material input (DMI). A comparison with other developed countries shows that the TMR and DMI flows, measured in mass per person and in mass per GDP unit, are, in Italy, lower than the corresponding figures evaluated for the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. An interpretation of these results is presented. The analysis may give information useful for environmental considerations, although the limits of such an approach are made clear. | Materials Flow Analysis of the Italian Economy | de Marco, Ottilia | Journal Article | academic | 2000 |
Case Study
Comparison
EUROSTAT (must be removed)
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Germany
Italy
Japan
National
Single point in time
The Netherlands
United States
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| Energy flow analysis as a tool for developing a sustainable society—a case study of a Swedish island In order to develop a sustainable society, tools are needed to analyze the relationships between human activities and ecosystems and to estimate the carrying capacity of the natural resource base. In this paper, energy analysis is applied in a study of the small island society Nämdö in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Nämdö has a permanent population of 41 persons and ca. 1000 summer residents. We estimated the energy and material flows on the island, including the primary and secondary production in natural and cultivated ecosystems, human production and consumption of food, and production of waste. Our results show that the island society's consumption exceeds the natural carrying capacity of the island. A great deal of food and energy is imported while only a minor amount of local resources are utilized. The island society is, at present, not constrained by the local resource base, but instead depends heavily on functioning transport communications with the mainland. Based on our findings we make recommendations for greater self-sufficiency, including use of locally available renewable resources and increased recycling. | Energy flow analysis as a tool for developing a sustainable ... | Sundkvist, A; Jansson, A; Enefalk, A; Larsson, P. | Journal Article | academic | 1999 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Island
Sub-national
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| Materials accounting as a tool for decision making in environmental policy (MAc TEmPo) The main objective of MAc TEmPo was to supply tools for decision makers in environmental protection and resources conservation. Previous work of the partners indicated, that MFA can be successfully used for: Early recognition of future problems of environmental loadings and resource depletion, to set priorities and to define measures for efficient environmental protection and resources utilization, and to analyse and improve the effect of measures taken in environmental policy. Based on this experience, MFA can be seen as a key instrument for the transition from today's 'filter-strategy' to the next generation of source oriented environmental measures, focusing on the total regional metabolism and not on wastes and emissions alone. Additional objectives were: to develop and improve existing and new computer based models for MFA, to share MFA experiences by the partners in four workshops and by the exchange of personnel, and to increase the number of experts in the field of MFA by involving additional research groups in the project. Also, the capacity to use statistics in support of environmental policy was to be improved. A more specific project aim was to look into early recognition of future risks of certain material flows by identifying long-term accumulations and depletion. Measurable objectives include the goals reached in the case studies (national and urban metabolism of metals, chlorine and other materials; MFA models) and to give first proposals of how to use MFA for decision making in environmental protection and resource conservation. In relation to this task, it should be noted, that the MAc TEmPo team included only one expert from the field of political science. | Materials accounting as a tool for decision making in environmental ... | Brunner, P.H. and Laner, T. and Lohm, U. and de Haes, U. and Desitler, M. and Baccini, P | Report | reports | 1998 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Policy
UM review paper import
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| Resource flows: the material basis of industrial economies Constructs a parallel set of national accounts in physical terms using material flow analysis; proposes new summary measures that can be used with economic indicators to give a far more accurate sense of the scale and consequences of industrial activity. Currently, countries measure their economic growth and performance through the System of National Accounts (SNA). These financial accounts measure the total economic transactions in an economy. Indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) provide information on whether national income is growing or declining. There is no equivalent system for measuring the physical "transactions" in an economy. Policy- and other decision-makers have very little idea of the material requirements of modern economies and few indicators of where, or when, physical constraints are likely to be reached. With the exception of energy efficiency (a strategic resource), very little official attention is paid to the relationship between resource requirements and economic output. Examining material flows in Austria, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, and the United States, this report develops model accounts of the complete " material cycle" or the flow of raw materials through the processes of extraction, production, use, and disposal. The report also documents: the relatively modest quantities of materials that are recycled or added each year to stock in use (largely in the form of infrastructure and durable goods), the materials that are quickly returned to the environment as pollution or waste, with potential for environmental harm. The authors argue that the resource efficiency gains brought about by the rise of e-commerce and the shift from heavy industries toward knowledge- and service-based industries have been more than offset by the scale of economic growth and consumer choices that favor energy- and material-intensive lifestyles. | Resource flows: the material basis of industrial economies | Adriaanse, Albert and Bringezu, Stefan and Hammond, Allen and Moriguchi, Yuichi and Rodenburg, Eric and Rogich, Donald and Schütz, Helmut | Book | academic | 1997 |
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Germany
Japan
National
United States
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| Material Flow Accounting and Information for Environmental Policies in the City of Stockholm This paper presents some thoughts on the use of material flow accounting (MFA) as a tool for providing information to the environmental policy making and management in a city. Examples are given from the early approaches to MFA made by the Environment and Health Protection Administration in Stockholm. Further, some results and experiences from a current research project on MFA and environmental information management at the municipal level are presented. The different MFA-studies carried out in Stockholm were able to clarify a number of questions regarding the magnitudes of various nitrogen, phosphorus and metal related problems in Stockholm. Further, connections between economic activities in Stockholm on the one hand, and emissions and environmental pressure on the other hand, are to some extent identified and quantified. Thus, better opportunities for setting proper goals and priorities in local environmental management have been, and will be further achieved. This will also make it easier to adopt a more pro-active approach in local environmental management. The studies, especially the most recent, have provided information to allow a more fruitful discussion between different stakeholders in the city. This is of great importance since local Agenda 21 work started in Stockholm and elsewhere is needed in order to cope with those problems that, regarding nitrogen and phosphorus, are identified as the most important. | Material Flow Accounting and Information for Environmental Policies in the ... | Burström, Fredrik and Brandt, Nils and Frostell, Björn and Mohlander, Ulf | Conference Paper | None | 1997 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
Method
Stockholm
Sweden
Urban
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| Production, consumption, and externalities Seminal study that presented a material flow study of the US economy. The paper dates back to 1969. | Production, consumption, and externalities | Ayres, Robert U and Kneese, Allen V | Journal Article | academic | 1969 |
Case Study
Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis (EW-MFA)
National
United States
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