Abstract
Rapid economic growth, expanding populations and increasing prosperity are driving up demand for energy, water and food, especially in developing countries. To understand the energy consumption of a country, we used the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach. The MuSIASEM is an innovative approach to accounting that integrates quantitative information generated by distinct types of conventional models based on different dimensions and scales of analysis. The main objective of this work is to enrich the MuSIASEM approach with information from multivariate methods in order to improve the efficiency of existing models of sustainability. The Biplot method permits the joint plotting, in a reduced dimension of the rows (individuals) and columns (variables) of a multivariate data matrix. We found, in the case study of Ecuador, that the highest values of the Exosomatic Metabolic Rate (EMR) per economic sector and Economic Labor Productivity (ELP) are located in the Productive Sector (PS). We conclude that the combination of the MuSIASEM variables with the HJ-Biplot allows us to easily know the detailed behavior of the labor productivity and energy consumption of a country.
Highlights
Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel
The main conclusions reached in our analysis are the following: 1. The use of the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach with the HJ-Biplot allows us to know the detailed behavior of the labor productivity and energy consumption of a country
With the MuSIASEM approach we cannot put all of the 221 individual cantons and 26 variables in one graphic, whereas with the HJ-Biplot method it possible to plot the rows and columns of the data matrix as points on a low dimension vectorial space
Summary
Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel This has resulted in a substantial and irreversible loss of diversity of life on Earth [1]. In the Brundtland report, sustainable development is defined as “development which meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [3] Under this concept we can talk about Sustainability Science, which focuses on the dynamic interactions between nature and society and offers a more pertinent opportunity to help guide nature-society interactions along sustainable trajectories throughout the globe [2]. This interest is because of the individual growing importance of each of the elements, and a result of recognition, from those working in sustainability science, that it is impossible to analyze the different elements of the nexus one at the time, as if they were independent from each other [4]
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