Capita Resource Use Research Articles

A Comparison Between the Monetary, Resource and Energy Costs of the Conventional Industrial Supply Path and the “Simpler Way” Path for the Supply of Eggs

Global sustainability requires large-scale reductions in rich world per capita resource use rates. Globalised, industrialised and commercialised supply paths involve high resource, energy, dollar and other costs. However, “The Simpler Way” involving small-scale integrated localised settlements and economies can enable enormous reductions in these costs. Most transport, packaging and marketing costs can be eliminated, and various outputs such as animal manures, kitchen scraps, garden biomass, household grey and black water can be transformed from costly “waste” disposal problems into direct inputs to other functions such as methane digesters, composting, and fish and animal feeds. Thus, there are also savings on the cost of inputs of fertilizer and water, etc. In addition the industrial supply path tends to have many negative “co-products”, most obviously pollution effects, whereas the local path avoids these while providing important positive co-products and social benefits. This study uses input–output analysis of one product, eggs, to illustrate how big the difference between the two paths can be. The implications for sustainable development are profound. If the findings of this study are sound and generalizable the Simpler Way would enable very large reductions in resource and ecological impacts for sustainability to be achieved, but only if extremely radical changes are made in economic, political and cultural systems.

Legacies, lags and long‐term trends: Effective flow restoration in a changed and changing world

Abstract Human impacts on natural ecosystems are pervasive and will play out more severely as human populations and per capita resource use increase. Freshwater ecosystems are critical for human well‐being and experience a diverse range of human‐induced pressures. Most river systems throughout the world have much‐altered flow regimes. The Murray–Darling Basin in southeastern Australian has been the focus of an extensive water reform process to address the over‐allocation of water for human uses. This has included many scientific investigations, hydrological modelling and the development of institutional and market structures to reallocate water. Substantial recovery of water has been achieved, which has been used to restore aspects of the natural flow regime. We reviewed recent papers on responses to flow restoration in the Murray–Darling Basin and complemented this with inferences from the global literature. Ecological responses to flow restoration are often inconsistent, site and taxon specific and difficult to detect. By combining ideas from mainstream thinking in restoration ecology with the insights from our review, we propose a conceptual model for understanding responses to flow restoration. This model incorporates key factors that influence the size of ecological responses to restoration, including existing ecological condition, legacy impacts of past change, interactions with other variables, life‐history traits of taxa and broad‐scale and long‐term trends due to climate or land‐use change.

Potential future scenarios for Australia's native biodiversity given on-going increases in human population

Most natural assets, including native biodiversity (our focus), are under increasing threat from direct (loss of habitat, hunting) and indirect (climate change) human actions. Most human impacts arise from increasing human populations coupled with rises in per capita resource use. The rates of change of human actions generally outpace those to which the biota can respond or adapt. If we are to maintain native biodiversity, then we must develop ways to envisage how the biota may be affected over the next several decades to guide management and policy responses. We consider the future for Australia's native biodiversity in the context of two assumptions. First, the human population in Australia will be 40million by 2050, which has been mooted by federal government agencies. Second, greenhouse gas emissions will track the highest rates considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scenarios are based on major drivers of change, which were constructed from seven key drivers of change pertinent to native biodiversity. Five scenarios deal with differing distributions of the human population driven by uncertainties in climate change and in the human responses to climate change. Other scenarios are governed largely by global change and explore different rates of resource use, unprecedented rates of technological change, capabilities and societal values. A narrative for each scenario is provided. The set of scenarios spans a wide range of possible future paths for Australia, with different implications for the future of native biodiversity.

Forecasting invasions: resource use by mussels informs invasion patterns along the South African coast

Invasive species are often more able to rapidly and efficiently utilise resources than natives, and comparing per capita resource use at different resource densities among invaders and trophically analogous natives could allow for reliable predictions of invasiveness. In South Africa, invasion by the Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis has transformed wave-exposed shores, negatively affecting native mussel species. Currently, South Africa is experiencing a second mussel invasion with the recent detection of the South American Semimytilus algosus. We tested per capita uptake of an algal resource by invading M. galloprovincialis, S. algosus, and the native Aulacomya atra at different algal concentrations and temperatures, representing the west and south coasts of South Africa, to examine whether their per capita resource use could be a predictor of their spread and subsequent invasiveness. Regardless of temperature, M. galloprovincialis was the most efficient consumer, significantly reducing algal cells compared to the other species when the resource was presented in both low and high starting densities. Furthermore, these findings aligned with a greater biomass of M. galloprovincialis on the shore in comparison with the other species. Resource use by the new invader S. algosus was dependent on the density of resource and, although this species was efficient at low algal concentrations at cooler temperatures, this pattern broke down at higher algal densities. This was once more reflected in lower biomass in surveys of this species along the cool west coast. We therefore forecast that S. algosus will be become established along the south coast; however, we also predict that M. galloprovincialis will maintain dominance on these shores.

The proximity of nations to a socially sustainable steady-state economy

There has been increasing interest in new economic models that aim to improve quality of life without increasing consumption. This article provides the first empirical analysis of how close modern-day economies are to the concept of a “steady-state economy”, and explores whether there is any relationship between a country's proximity to such an economy and its social performance. The analysis is carried out using the Degrowth Accounts, a set of 16 biophysical and social indicators that are derived from Herman Daly's definition of a steady-state economy and the social goals of the degrowth movement. These indicators are applied to ∼180 countries over a 10-year period. The analysis reveals that the majority of countries in the world are biophysical growth economies. There are only a small number of countries where resource use is relatively constant from year to year (e.g. Denmark, France, Japan, Poland, Romania, and the US), and only four countries experiencing biophysical degrowth (Germany, Guyana, Moldova, and Zimbabwe). There are no countries that achieve a true steady-state economy, defined as an economy with a stable level of resource use maintained within ecological limits. However, a few countries come relatively close, including Colombia, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, and South Africa. In general, countries with stable resource use perform better on many social indicators than countries with either increasing or decreasing resource use. This finding runs contrary to conventional economic thought. However, social performance is also higher in countries with greater per capita resource use. Overall, these findings suggest that a steady-state economy can be socially sustainable, but countries need to become much more efficient at transforming natural resources into human well-being if all seven billion people on Earth are to lead a good life within ecological limits.

The effectiveness of conservation interventions to overcome the urban-environmental paradox.

Globally, urbanization is rapidly growing cities and towns at a historically unprecedented rate, and this rapid urban growth is influencing many facets of the environment. This paper reviews the effectiveness of conservation interventions that are designed to increase urban sustainability. It presents evidence for an apparent urban-environmental paradox: while the process of urban growth converts natural habitat to other land covers and degrades natural resources and ecosystem function, the increase in human population can increase demand for natural resources and ecosystem services. The fundamental problem that many conservation interventions try to address is that most facets of the environment are common or public goods, and are hence undervalued in decision making (market failure). The paper presents a threefold classification of conservation interventions in cities: conservation in the city (protecting biodiversity), conservation by the city (reducing per capita resource and energy use), and conservation for cities (projects that maintain or enhance ecosystem services). It ends by discussing methods for spatially targeting conservation interventions of all three types and for quantifying the effectiveness of interventions retrospectively.

Water cooperation to cope with twenty-first century challenges

The twenty-first century, referred to as the Anthropocene, will leave us with tremendous environmental changes. Unprecedented population growth, a changing climate, rapid urbanization, expansion of infrastructure, migration, land conversion and pollution translate into changes in the fluxes, pathways and stores of water—from rapidly melting glaciers to the decline of groundwater due to overexploitation. Population density and per capita resource use have increased dramatically over the past century, and watersheds, aquifers and the associated ecosystems have undergone significant modifications that affect the vitality, quality and availability of the resource. Current United Nations predictions estimate that the world population will reach 9 billion in 2050. The exponential growth in population and the more intensive use of water per capita are among the leading key drivers behind hydrologic change and its impact. It is a huge challenge on an already resource-limited planet to meet the various needs of the people, especially of those who already lack access to clean water.1 The variability, vulnerability and uncertainty of global water resources will be further exacerbated by increasingly erratic weather events, including droughts, floods and storms. Such disasters seriously impede efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Water scarcity due to drought, land degradation and desertification already affects 1.5 billion people in the world and is closely associated with poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition.

Biodiversity, Extinction, and Humanity’s Future: The Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Human Population and Resource Use

Human actions have altered global environments and reduced biodiversity by causing extinctions and reducing the population sizes of surviving species. Increasing human population size and per capita resource use will continue to have direct and indirect ecological and evolutionary consequences. As a result, future generations will inhabit a planet with significantly less wildlife, reduced evolutionary potential, diminished ecosystem services, and an increased likelihood of contracting infectious disease. The magnitude of these effects will depend on the rate at which global human population and/or per capita resource use decline to sustainable levels and the degree to which population reductions result from increased death rates rather than decreased birth rates.

Is there a 1970s Syndrome? Analyzing Structural Breaks in the Metabolism of Industrial Economies

In this paper we focus on long-term socio-ecological transitions from the agrarian to the industrial metabolic regime. Statistical analysis is used to identify structural breaks in the development of energy use in the second half of the 20th century. A stabilization of per capita energy and resource use in most high-income countries was reached in the early 1970ies, after a period of accelerated growth of resource use since the end of World War II. Most empirical turns in trend coincide with the oil price crises of 1973 and 1979. This stabilization could offer lessons for a future sustainability transition.

Sustainable consumption and scientific research

In the recent past I had the opportunity of participating in three conferences, each of which was sustainabilityfocused with an engineering orientation. As is typical these days, sustainability discussion always begins with unsustainability of consumption in contrast to declining natural resources. Engineering research community has responded with the idea of dematerialization, which is first and foremost an attempt to decouple economic growth, such as increase in gross domestic product (GDP), from adverse environmental impact. This has been shown in some cases to have already been achieved partially; however, the goal remains to be full decoupling. Secondarily, dematerialization is directed towards reducing use of limited natural resources to satisfy the growing functional need of consumption. Dematerialization, while providing a useful idea towards efficient resource use, does not guarantee less consumption per capita. Great innovations in the future can be expected to come from scientific and engineering research to meet the decoupling objective. Directing research directly to reducing per capita consumption of material and energy, however, is another objective which could use the idea of dematerialization. The argument for sustainable consumption goes like this: the developed countries are unfairly using, on a comparative basis, far more material and energy consumption per capita than the developing countries. According to this line of thinking, the standard of living is not necessarily tied to larger per capita resource use. One illustrative example is the use of automobiles. Personal ownership of automobiles is not central to enjoying the function or service that automobiles deliver. Thus, if the ownership could be restricted in favor of rental, the same benefit can be obtained with fewer automobiles per capita, thereby reducing per capita resource use, pollution creation and environmental footprint. Some congested parts of the developed world, such as New York City and Washington, DC, already use this idea to a small extent. Greater good is and can be served by public transportation as well. Similarly, one could argue that per capita living space in square feet per person, which is comparatively large in developing nations, could also be reduced without reducing comfort and standard of living, thereby reducing environmental footprint and saving valuable resources for the future generation. If one continues to argue in this fashion, one arrives at the inevitable conclusion that human progress can be decoupled from personal consumption. The problem is that the acceptance of this decoupling can only be forced, as people will tend to spend when they earn. Thus, earnings need to be restricted. There is no science or engineering in this prospect. The only ways restriction of consumption or earnings can be implemented is either voluntary societal choice, which is unlikely, or force, which only a government can, in theory, exercise uniformly on all people. I asked one passionate adherent to sustainable consumption, who organized one of the conferences, if forced societal choice is different from socialism. He vehemently opposed this proposition, but still held that scientific and engineering research can provide solutions for a sustainable planet, which must of necessity, enjoy restriction on consumption. There will be myriads of innovative engineering solutions in the future that will bring that about, without the need to resort to force. Instruments of political economy, such as taxation and tariff, can effectively be used to curb demand. Unsustainability of our consumption is so dire, he argued, S. K. Sikdar (&) National Risk Management Research Lab/USEPA, 26 W. M.L. King Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45268, USA e-mail: sikdar.subhas@epa.gov

The Metabolic Transition in Japan

Summary The notion of a (socio-) metabolic transition has been used todescribe fundamental changes in socioeconomic energy andmaterial use during industrialization. During the last century,Japandevelopedfromalargelyagrarianeconomytooneoftheworld’s leading industrial nations. It is one of the few industrialcountries that has experienced prolonged dematerializationand recently has adopted a rigorous resource policy. This arti-cle investigates changes in Japan’s metabolism during industri-alization on the basis of a material flow account for the periodfrom 1878 to 2005. It presents annual data for material ex-traction, trade, and domestic consumption by major materialgroup and explores the relations among population growth,economic development, and material (and energy) use. Dur-ing the observed period, the size of Japan’s metabolism grewby a factor of 40, and the share of mineral and fossil materialsin domestic material consumption (DMC) grew to more than90%. Much of the growth in the Japanese metabolism wasbased on imported materials and occurred in only 20 yearsafter World War II (WWII), when Japan rapidly built up largestocks of built infrastructure, developed heavy industry, andadopted patterns of mass production and consumption. Thesurge in material use came to an abrupt halt with the firstoil crisis, however. Material use stabilized, and the economyeventually began to dematerialize. Although gross domesticproduct (GDP) grew much faster than material use, improve-mentsinmaterialintensityarearelativelyrecentphenomenon.Japanemergesasarolemodelforthemetabolictransitionbutis also exceptional in many ways.www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jie

Changes in a tropical forest support metabolic zero‐sum dynamics

Major shifts in many ecosystem-level properties of tropical forests have been observed, but the processes driving these changes are poorly understood. The forest on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) exhibited a 20% decrease in the number of trees and a 10% increase in average diameter. Using a metabolism-based zero-sum framework, we show that increases in per capita resource use at BCI, caused by increased tree size and increased temperature, compensated for the observed declines in abundance. This trade-off between abundance and average resource use resulted in no net change in the rate resources are fluxed by the forest. Observed changes in the forest are not consistent with other hypotheses, including changes in overall resource availability and existing self-thinning models. The framework successfully predicts interrelated changes in size, abundance and temperature, indicating its utility for understanding changes in the structure and dynamics of ecosystems.

Public health ethics in times of global environmental change: time to look beyond human interests

In public health, awareness of the threats to human health of global environmental change is slowly increasing. Important examples of global environmental change are climate change, large-scale soil degradation, freshwater depletion, and biodiversity losses [1]. These are all due to increased human pressure on our planetary environment, driven by population growth and an increase in per capita resource use and waste production. Global environmental changes form potential, though partly or largely unknown, threats to human health, for example through heatwaves and other extreme weather events, changes in the spread of microorganisms, changes in biological productivity of land and water, and air and water pollution [2]. While these potential threats to human health are important enough to warrant the attention of public health researchers and policy-makers [3], the impact of global environmental change on the health of other species is actually much larger. The rise in human population numbers, from slightly below 1 billion in 1800 to more than 6 billion in 2005, has been associated with a massive extinction of other living species. This is due to habitat destruction, introduction of invasive non-native species, pollution of air, water, and soil, and over-harvesting by hunting and fishing [4]. The total number of living species has been estimated to be around 6 million. As a result of gradually changing environments, species come and go, albeit on a rather large time-scale (0.1 to 10 million years). On the basis of fossil records, it has been possible to estimate the long-term background extinction rate, i.e. the rate at which species have disappeared in the past. This is around one to five species per year, taking all forms of life together [4]. Currently, the extinction rate of mammals and birds alone is approximately one species per year. If the extinction rate of these well-researched species is indicative of that of invertebrates, the total number of species disappearing each year could be in the order of 1,000. If current trends of habitat destruction continue, half of all living species may disappear in the coming 50 to 100 years [4]. In the words of one biologist, during these years life on earth will go through a narrow bottleneck, and this will require determined conservation measures [5].

The significance of the limits to growth for the discussion of social policy

Puts forward the limit to growth perspective, which is rarely mentioned in societies devoted to the increase of material living standards. Outlines the resources each individual in rich countries uses and extrapolates those figures to cover the rest of the world’s population, proving that it is clearly impossible to sustain such living standards. Criticizes profit maximization, market forces and the pursuit of business opportunities as inappropriate to the needs of the world’s poor majority. Explores how society could reduce its per capita resource use and environmental impact, particularly through the development of small scale self‐sufficient economies. Points out that most of the real economy would be in non‐cash areas. Hastens to mention that a simpler, less material and closer‐to‐nature lifestyle does not exclude information technology. Indicates that access to communal property and service needs to replace income as the means to a satisfying life. Summarizes how community gardens can be set up and the roles that community workers could play in saving towns.

Measuring dominance and diversity in ecological communities: choosing the right variables

Abstract. Although there are many studies in searching for the most useful community diversity index, the importance of choosing an appropriate parameter has been neglected. Here, we examined dominance and diversity in early post‐fire chaparral communities using different variables, i.e. plant density, cover and biomass. Significant different results were produced by applying different parameters and the difference may be caused by the inconsistency in density, cover, and biomass allocated in each life form. Among the three parameters, biomass was most successful in detecting differences among communities because the apportionment of biomass among species was more variable than that of density. Although the three species variables represent different aspects of community properties and their relative performance may vary among communities, we recommend the use of biomass or productivity data as the most appropriate variable because it can best represent per capita resource use and resource partitioning among organisms in competitive situations.

If You Really Want To Save The Environment

It is important to distinguish between two sorts of greenies. First there are those who think that the environmental problem can be solved by more attention to clearing up, or minimising in future, the damage caused by industrial-affluent society. Most environmentally concerned people are in this category, calling for things like more pollution control, but having no recognition of any need to question our affluent lifestyles or the rate of producing and consuming and economic growth their society involves. The first part of the following discussion argues that this common position is mistaken, that there is no chance of solving the environment problem without facing up to drastic reduction in GNP and ‘living standards’.Unfortunately there are at present few greenies of the second type; people who realise that environmental damage is just one more huge problem being generated by our unsustainable ‘growth and greed’ society. There is no more important issue for environmental educators to focus on than the question of whether it is sufficient to patch up the damage being caused while plunging on down the track to ever-greater affluence and GNP, or whether the problems can only be solved by fundamental transition to a very different society, a radical conserver society. The argument below is that there is no chance of solving the environment problem nor any of the other major global problems facing us unless we move to lifestyles, patterns of settlement, values, and especially to an economic system which permit us to live well on far lower rates of per capita resource use and environmental impact that we have at the present in countries like Australia.

Population and economics: A bioeconomic analysis

The notion of optimal population is recast as a problem of optimal scale (population times per capita resource use). Bioeconomic limits to scale are considered, drawing on concepts from A.J. Lotka and N. Georgescu-Roegen. The ethical choice between many people at low resource use per capita versus fewer people at higher resource per capita transcends bioeconomics, but is unavoidable and highlights the issue of sufficiency as well as efficiency. A policy of increasing resource severance taxes and lowering income taxes, especially on lower incomes, is suggested as a way of serving both efficiency and sufficiency.

Sustainable Development: From Concept and Theory to Operational Principles

THREE CONCEPTUAL ISSUES SEEM TO ME CRITICAL for clear thinking about economic development and the environment in the next decade. After stating the three issues briefly, I will elaborate each one in turn, along with the relations among them. The first issue is whether the basic conceptual starting point of economic analysis should be the circular flow of exchange value, as it presently is, or the one-way entropic throughput of matter-energy. The latter concept is virtually absent from economics today, yet without it it is impossible to relate the economy to the environment. It is as if biology tried to understand animals only in terms of their circulatory system, with no recognition of the fact that they also have digestive tracts. The metabolic flow is not circular. The digestive tract firmly ties the animal to its environment at both ends. Without digestive tracts animals would be self-contained perpetual-motion machines. Likewise for an economy without an entropic throughput. The second issue is to distinguish two dimensions of the throughput: its scale and its allocation. The concept of optimal allocation among alternative uses of the total resource flow (throughput) must be clearly distinguished from the concept of an optimal scale of total resource flow relative to the environment. Under ideal conditions the market can find an optimal allocation in the sense of Pareto. But the market cannot find an optimal scale any more than it can find an optimal distribution. The latter requires the additon of ethical criteria; the former requires the further addition of ecological criteria. The independence of allocation from distribution is widely recognized; the independence of allocation from scale is not widely recognized, but is easily understood.' In theory whether we double the population and the per capita resource use rate, or cut them in half, the market will still grind out a Pareto optimal allocation for every scale. Yet the scale of the economy is certainly not a matter of indifference. A boat that tries to carry

Toward a new economic model

Standard economics fails to ask the question of how large the economy should be allowed to grow question posed by steady-state economy the populations of people and of goods are maintained constant by low rate of activity. Birth rates equal death rates and production equals depreciation all at low levels so that people live long physical goods are durable and environmental depletion and pollution rates are low. Steady-state economics works to answer the question of economic growth in terms of scale of activity that is ecologically sustainable over the long term at level sufficient to provide good life for whatever population size can be accommodated under those conditions. Standard economics considers production and consumption primarily in relation to exchange. Its bias toward growth is reinforced by welfare criteria based on the supposed truism that more always is preferable to less. According to standard growth economics population growth is not major problem or is in fact beneficial as long as it is not too rapid thereby increasing the standard of living. If population like commodities is to be maintained in steady state there must be some notion of optimum population levels. Joseph Spengler defines such population as one in which a specified indicator of welfare is maximized. The standard can be specified as follows: maximize the cumulative number of lives ever to be lived over time at level of per capita resource use that is sufficient for good Sufficiency and sustainability are the dominant criteria. It is necessary to decide what range of incomes corresponds to sufficiency for good life. Malthus stated: There should be no more people in country than could enjoy glass of wine or piece of beef with their dinner. If any such definition of sufficiency were accepted as moral imperative for each national community other things would need to be adjusted to satisfy it. 3 possibilities for adjustment are: raise carrying capacity by means of technological advancement; give necessities priority over luxuries; and reduce the population. Steady-state economics recommends controlling both the production of goods and population once sufficiency has been realized. At this time neither optimum population nor optimum combinations of human and commodity population can be specified but the criteria of sustainability and sufficiency are important guidelines as are the principle of limited inequality and the goal of zero population growth. (EXCERPT)