Journal
POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT
Volume 22, Issue 2, Pages 109-153Publisher
KLUWER ACADEMIC-HUMAN SCIENCES PRESS
DOI: 10.1023/A:1026691623300
Keywords
multiple-scale; integrated assessment; societal metabolism; sustainability; bioeconomics; environmental loading
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In this paper we present several concepts related to integrated analysis of societal metabolism across scales. First we introduce the concept of dynamic energy budget of human societies, which is based on the distinction between exosomatic and endosomatic energy flows and the possibility of establishing autocatalytic loops (egg-chicken patterns) among them. Second, we discuss the nature of the dramatic changes that the industrial revolution induced on the characteristics of societal metabolism. Finally, we discuss methodological problems related to the representation of complex adaptive systems. Dealing with sustainability of human societies requires the parallel use of non-equivalent descriptive domains. This, in turn, requires the ability of scaling up and down when moving across levels handling parallel non-reducible assessments.
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