Social Metabolism, Ecological Distribution Conflicts, and Valuation Languages

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This special issue brings together ecological economics and political ecological analyses to a greater extent than has been done before (M'Gonigle, 1999; Sneddon et al., 2006; Gerber et al., 2009). It sheds light on resource extraction and waste disposal conflicts in the context of a changing global social metabolism. By “social metabolism”we refer to the manner in which human societies organize their growing exchanges of energy and materials with the environment (Fischer-Kowalski, 1997; Martinez-Alier, 2009). Methodological tools and theoretical frameworks from the cross-disciplinary fields of ecological economics, industrial ecology, environmental sociology, ethno-ecology, social ecology, economic geography and political ecology are mobilized to explain socio-ecological dynamics and environmental conflicts in a range of case-studies from different parts of the world. In three cases the focus is on conflicts on the socalled extractive industries (mining and fossil fuels), in four cases on biomass conflicts, and in two on waste disposal conflicts. A socio-metabolic perspective is adopted here which requires dealing not onlywith the extractive industries—mining formetals and buildingmaterials or extraction of fossil fuels (Canel et al., 2010)— but also with biomass extraction conflicts (tree plantations, e.g. Gerber, in press, agro-fuels and other export crops, deforestation and mangrove destruction, and fisheries). Biomass is extracted in non-sustainable ways. The HANPP (human appropriation of net primary production) is increasing inmany areas of theworld because of population growth or because of exports as our case-studies show. There is a new literature on the “embodied” HANPP (Haberl et al., 2009). Research networks on mining, fossil fuels, wind and nuclear energy, water use, fishing, biofuels, tree plantations, land-grabbing, deforestation or mangroves destruction often communicate their findings separately with too little contact across different resource domains, andwithout bridges to the research on conflicts on transport and waste disposal. From the socio-metabolic perspective, we focus instead not only on mineral and biomass resource extraction but also on conflicts “at the end-of-the-pipe”, i.e. waste disposal (such as waste shipped overseas despite the Basel Treaty). This includes the carbon dioxide disposal conflict. There is a link (as the Yasuni ITT initiative in Ecuador makes clear, Martinez-Alier and Temper, 2007; Larrea and Warnars, 2009) between “leaving oil in the ground” and