Social Metabolism

"Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary" is a stimulating collection of over 100 essays on transformative alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values. In the post-development imagination, 'development' would no longer be the organizing principle of social life. The book presents worldviews and practices from around the world in a collective search for an ecologically wise and socially just world. It also offers critical essays on a number of false solutions that those in power are proposing in an attempt to 'greenwash' development. The 120+ contributors to the volume include activists, academics, and practitioners, with a wealth of experience in their respective fields of engagement.

The book focuses on the conceptualisation and practice of radical alternatives to ‘development’. It also challenges mainstream or superficial solutions to global crises, including ‘green economy’ and ‘sustainable development’. What has been missing is a broad transcultural compilation of concrete concepts, worldviews and practices from around the world, challenging the modernist ontology of universalism in favour of a multiplicity of possible worlds. This is what it means to call for a pluriverse.

The book follows the structure of an encyclopedia, with short 1000-word entries for each of the key terms. The entries are written by invited authors. In the list of authors you might recognize Vandana Shiva, Serge Latouche, Wolfgang Sachs, Silvia Federici, Nnimmo Bassey, Gustavo Esteva, Katherine Gibson, Maristella Svampa and many more.

Cover and Table of contents.

Forthcoming, 2018 

Publisher: Authors Up Front (self-publishing platform for the creative community; Delhi, India). See: http://authorsupfront.com/

License: Creative Commons

The environmental movement may be “the most comprehensive and influential movement of our time” (Castells 1997: 67), representing for the ‘post-industrial’ age what the workers’ movement was for the industrial period. Yet while strike statistics have been collected for many countries since the late nineteenth century (van der Velden 2007),1 until the present no administrative body tracks the occurrence and frequency of mobilizations or protests related to environmental issues at the global scale, in the way that the World Labour Organization tracks the occurrence of strike action.2 Thus until the present it has been impossible to properly document the prevalence and incidence of contentious activity related to environmental issues or to track the ebb and flow of protest activity. Such an exercise is necessary because if the twentieth century has been the one of workers struggles, the twenty-first century could well be the one of environmentalists. This Special Feature presents the results from such an exercise—The Global Atlas of Environmental Justice—a unique global inventory of cases of socio-environmental conflicts built through a collaborative process between academics and activist groups which includes both qualitative and quantitative data on thousands of conflictive projects as well as on the social response.

This Special Feature applies the lenses of political ecology and ecological economics to unpack and understand these socio-environmental conflicts, otherwise known as ‘ecological distribution conflicts’, (hereafter EDCs, Martinez-Alier 1995, 2002). The contributions in this special feature explore the why, what, how and who of these contentious processes within a new comparative political ecology.

The articles in this special issue underline the need for a politicization of socio-environmental debates, whereby political refers to the struggle over the kinds of worlds the people want to create and the types of ecologies they want to live in. We put the focus on who gains and who loses in ecological processes arguing that these issues need to be at the center of sustainability science. Secondly, we demonstrate how environmental justice groups and movements coming out of those conflicts play a fundamental role in redefining and promoting sustainability. We contend that protests are not disruptions to smooth governance that need to be managed and resolved, but that they express grievances as well as aspirations and demands and in this way may serve as potent forces that can lead to the transformation towards sustainability of our economies, societies and ecologies.

The articles in this collection contribute to a core question of sustainability science—why and through what political, social and economic processes some are denied the right to a safe environment, and how to support the necessary social and political transformation to enact environmental justice.

Open access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-018-0563-4

Journal Sustainability Science

Can ecological distribution conflicts turn into forces for sustainability? This overview paper addresses in a systematic conceptual manner the question of why, through whom, how, and when conflicts over the use of the environment may take an active role in shaping transitions toward sustainability. It presents a conceptual framework that schematically maps out the linkages between (a) patterns of (unsustainable) social metabolism, (b) the emergence of ecological distribution conflicts, (c) the rise of environmental justice movements, and (d) their potential contributions for sustainability transitions. The ways how these four processes can influence each other are multi-faceted and often not a foretold story. Yet, ecological distribution conflicts can have an important role for sustainability, because they relentlessly bring to light conflicting values over the environment as well as unsustainable resource uses affecting people and the planet. Environmental justice movements, born out of such conflicts, become key actors in politicizing such unsustainable resource uses, but moreover, they take sometimes also radical actions to stop them. By drawing on creative forms of mobilizations and diverse repertoires of action to effectively reduce unsustainabilities, they can turn from 'victims' of environmental injustices into 'warriors' for sustainability. But when will improvements in sustainability be lasting? By looking at the overall dynamics between the four processes, we aim to foster a more systematic understanding of the dynamics and roles of ecological distribution conflicts within sustainability processes.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-017-0519-0

Special Feature: The EJAtlas: Ecological Distribution Conflicts as Forces for Sustainability
https://link.springer.com/journal/11625/topicalCollection/AC_b4bf79ebe46fa50dcd80539725659023

In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) announced an unprecedented dangerous decline in biodiversity, one of the planetary limits that are currently being surpassed. The results and trends of socio-ecosystemic problems oblige us to attempt to understand and address the global crisis. Socio-ecosystemic problems are not only ethical and moral challenges but also ones of interest and security, since the financial resources available will be insufficient for people immersed in a sick and dysfunctional society. In this sense, science plays a central role in offering alternatives. This work is a theoretical construction, based on complexity and transdiscipline, that aims to offer these alternatives. It is enriched by several areas of knowledge, with the objective of broadening the interpretation of sustainability and overcoming some of the limitations of existing approaches through the recognition of the objective and subjective relationships between humans and ecosystems. Socio-ecosystemic sustainability is an adaptative process, taking the principles of strong sustainability and autopoiesis as an explanation of living and the processes that maintain and reproduce it. It is argued that goals centered on a vision of economic growth are not coherent with the natural processes of the biosphere-as shown by thermodynamics and complex systems-nor, indeed, with a functional society. The health and life on planet is a compelling reason for seeking dialogue between individuals and coherence in the three dimensions of socio-ecosystem sustainability.

Farm systems are facing a global challenge amidst a socio-metabolic transition that places them in a dilemma between increasing land-use intensity to meet the growing demand of food, feed, fibres and fuels, while avoiding a biodiversity loss at the same time. To solve this dilemma a deeper research on how species richness is kept in different land-use patterns is required, according to the quantity and quality of the ecological disturbance that farmers carry out across the landscape. We propose an Energy–Landscape Integrated Analysis model that assesses both the complexity of internal energy loops, and the information held in the whole network of socio-metabolic energy fluxes, so as to correlate this energy-information interplay with the functional landscape structure. The results show that the landscape heterogeneity of Mediterranean land-use mosaics, created by traditional organic mixed-farming, have tended to vanish as a result of a simultaneous reduction in the complexity of the interlinking pattern of energy flows and the quantity of information carried by them. The model could help us to reveal how and why different agroe-cosystem managements lead to key turning points in the relationship of the energy profile with landscape ecological functioning. No doubt, these results will be very useful for designing more sustainable farm systems worldwide in the future.

In this chapter, we consider comparative data on India and Latin America (and also for some variables on Africa and Europe) to explore the links between increases in the social metabolism (i.e. the flows of energy and materials in the economy) and the appearance of ecological distribution conflicts. We also analyse the successful resistance movements led by Environmental Justice Organizations (or EJOs), the "valuation languages" deployed by them, and the vocabulary of the global environmental justice movement.

We show that Latin America and India are at different moments in the race (concomitant with increased GDP per person) in the use of Material Flows. Latin America has reached  a level of extraction of about 15 tons per person/year of all materials (comparable to the European Union). It is unlikely that this will increase much. A substantial part goes for exports, much larger than the imports (and this is totally different in the EU, where imports in tons are much larger than exports in tons). In contrast, India is (still?) at a level of only 5 tons of material use per capita/year. If the economy grows, as it is likely, this will increase more or less in proportion to economic growth. Biomass will increase much less than building materials and fossil fuels.

This chapter traces the origins of ecological distribution conflicts in the changes in floes of energy and materials (and also on waste disposal), and makes some comparisons in this respect between Latin America and India. Other factors also play a role, like population density.

There is no “green growth” in the sense that the industrial economy is based on the use of fossil fuels. Therefore there is a need for "fresh" supplies of energy all the time. Materials can be recycled to some extent. When the economy grows, inputs of fossil fuels, biomass (food and feedstuffs, paper pulp, wood, agrofuels), building materials and mineral ores, keep increasing.

From: "Ideology, Political Economy and the Alternatives
Green Growth" Edited by Gareth Dale, Manu V. Mathai, and Jose Puppim de Oliveira (2016). Zed Books

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/G/bo23365078.html

Energy balances of farm systems have overlooked the role of energy flows that remain within agro-ecosystems. Yet, such internal flows fulfil important socio-ecological functions, including maintenance of farmers themselves and agro-ecosystem structures. Farming can either give rise to complex landscapes that favour associated biodiversity, or the opposite. This variability can be understood by assessing several types of Energy Returns on Investment (EROI). Applying these measures to a farm system in Catalonia, Spain in 1860 and in 1999, reveals the expected decrease in the ratio of final energy output to total and external inputs. The transition from solar-based to a fossil fuel based agro-ecosystem was further accompanied by an increase in the ratio of final energy output to biomass reused, as well as an absolute increase of Unharvested Phytomass grown in derelict forestland. The study reveals an apparent link between reuse of biomass and the decrease of landscape heterogeneity along with its associated biodiversity.

This paper presents a workable approach to the energy analysis of past and present agroecosystems aimed to contribute to their sustainability assessment. This analysis sees the agroecosystem as a set of energy loops between nature and society, and adopts a farm-operator standpoint at landscape level that involves setting specific system boundaries. This in turn entails a specific form to account for energy outputs as well as inputs. According to this conceptual approach, a clear distinction between Unharvested Phytomass, Land Produce and Final Produce is established, and also a sharp divide is adopted between the energy content of internal flows of Biomass Reused and external Societal Inputs when accounting for the amount of Total Inputs Consumed. Treating the conversion of solar radiation into local biomass as a gift of nature, enthalpy values of energy carriers are accounted for net Final Produce going outside as well as for Biomass Reused or Unharvested Phytomass, given that all these flows are evaluated from inside the agroecosystem. On the other hand, the external energy carriers are accounted for as embodied values by adding up direct and indirect energy carriers required to produce or deliver these Societal Inputs to the agroecosystem. The human Labour performed by the farm operators is treated as a special case of external input. It is accounted for the fraction of their energy intake devoted to perform agricultural work, by only using enthalpy or adding transport embodied values depending on the local or external origin of ingredients of the food basket. Following this line of reasoning we propose the definition of two different sets of agroecosystem’s Energy Returns On Energy Inputs (EROIs), depending on whether we use as numerator the Final Produce or the total phytomass harvested and unharvested included in the actual Net Primary Production. By comparing Final EROI with NPPact EROI we can obtain a proxy useful to assess whether the different paths taken by the energy throughputs may undermine or not biodiversity and soil fertility in agroecosystems. Then, by alternatively including or excluding Biomass Reused and External Inputs in the denominator, we split Final EROI into their respective energy returns to either internal or external inputs. This leads to a four interrelated EROIs whose meanings, shortcomings or ambiguities are examined respectively, in order to combine them all to draw the sociometabolic energy profiles of different sorts of agroecosystems along the socio-ecological transitions from traditional organic to industrial farm systems. The conceptual and quantitative relationships between the internal and external returns of Final EROI provide a method to decompose both dimensions in a way that clarifies their respective roles when comparing different agroecosystems, and reveals their capacity for increasing energy yields. This decomposition analysis also facilitates graphing their changing energy profiles through socio-ecological transitions along history. Finally, we suggest other related or derived indicators that can be useful for different purposes. With the bookkeeping proposed the energy analysis of farm systems is widened so as to highlight the role played by the biomass unharvested or internally reused in keeping the ecological services that biodiversity and soil fertility provide. This may also allow to test in agro-forest mosaics the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis long debated in ecology, by linking our energy analysis with landscape ecology metrics.

A proposal for a workable analysis of Energy Return On Investment (EROI) in agroecosystems. Part I: Analytical approach. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292906553_A_proposal_for_a_workable_analysis_of_Energy_Return_On_Investment_EROI_in_agroecosystems_Part_I_Analytical_approach [accessed Jun 14, 2017].

We explore the agroecosystem energy flows in two former communist countries, Czechia and Poland, in the two
decades after the fall of the totalitarian regimes. Energetic agroecosystem productivity, i.e., the energy content of
crops, livestock products per unit of area is compared to energy inputs, i.e., external inputs from society, i.e.,
labour, industrial inputs, and external biomass inputs and linked to land use change and demographic and
economic changes. Using the social metabolism concept and the Material and Energy Flow Accounting method,
our analysis looks at the system from a biophysical perspective and explores the interactions between the
economic system and nature. We calculate the Energy Return On Investment (EROI) indicators and also present
an easily understandable index for policy makers, the Input/Output Index.
After the end of communism in both countries in 1989, they both joined the EU in 2004. Along with this, both
states started the integration towards a global economy. Our main research questions are 1) to what extent does
the development of the energy flows and energy efficiency depend on the political organisation and the socioeconomic conditions and 2) if it follows rather more general trends or if it depends on the socioeconomic
structure of the agricultural system.
In the first decade immediately after 1990, the agricultural production radically slumped in both countries
together with an overall slowdown of the economic performance. The production started to grow again and
stabilised in the second decade mainly due to joining the EU in 2004. The integration to the global markets
raised the volume of trade by a factor of 5 in Czechia and 10 in Poland. The number of agricultural workers
decreased 1/3 in both countries over the whole period. Also, the cropland has been decreasing in both countries
by about 20% and production has concentrated to more fertile areas, while the abandonment of agricultural area
occurred mainly in less favoured areas. Both agricultural systems underwent structural changes in respect of
change of ownership, economic conditions and subsequently the structure of production. Recently, the crops of
economic significance dominate and Czechia exports raw materials as e.g., cereals and oil crops, and imports
mainly fruits, vegetables and processed food. Poland has become an important producer and exporter of agricultural products in Europe (fruits, meat). But this is rather an issue of scale than of gaining efficiency. Poland is
less efficient in the case of its share of inputs per outputs of energy flows with 21% while Czechia is 17%. Final
EROI is stable in both countries. In Czechia, it is slightly improving from 0.6 in 1993 to 1 in 2012, while in
Poland, the FEROI is stagnating around 0.6. The External Final EROI has slightly improved in Czechia from 2.8
to 3.8, while in Poland, it has been continuously decreasing from 2.6 to 2.2. The Internal Final EROI shows a
declining share of the biomass reused in Czechia: from 0.8 to 1.4, while keeping its volumes in Poland at the
value of 0.8.

The Gezi Park demonstrations that took place from June 2013 onwards across Turkey generated widespread interest and coverage. The lack of public consultation regarding the park’s future, coupled with aggressive police intervention, illustrate why the occupation of Gezi Park was not just meant to save trees, but also to save human rights, democracy, and freedoms in Turkey. Yet while that story covers how the conflict escalated from a demonstration in an Istanbul park to a nationwide revolt, it also conceals a different reason for the unrest: the enclosure of a public space by capital and the state, and a nationwide assault on the environment.
The aim of this commentary is threefold: First, to link the Gezi Park case to other environmental conflicts and resistance movements in Turkey over urban enclosures, mega-projects, mining, energy projects, and environmental degradation— many in areas that are ecologically quite sensitive and/or have high conservation value. Second, to situate these environmental conflicts, including the Gezi Park  resistance, within the broader context of Turkey’s structural change, economic growth dynamics, and social metabolism. And third, to discuss longer-term effects of the Gezi protests on the dynamics of environmental politics in Turkey.
A brief summary of the events is provided below, including the various ways the demonstrators protested and the oppressive measures they encountered. Next, the Gezi Park conflict is situated within a broader discussion on environmentalism in Turkey, and the resistance is analyzed from an environmental justice perspective. A map created to increase the visibility of environmental struggles is also used to show how the Gezi Park movement is linked to other environmental conflicts in the country. Finally, all these environmental conflicts are argued to be the product of Turkey’s growth dynamics and social metabolism. We believe that linking local movements both to one another and to the metabolic profile of the country is crucial in building an overarching environmental movement capable of robust and sustained action with transformative power at the national scale.

Analysis Opening the black box of energy throughputs in farm systems: A decomposition analysis between the energy returns to external inputs, internal biomass reuses and total inputs consumed (the Vallès County, Catalonia, c.1860 and 1999) Keywords: Energy Return On Investment (EROI) in farm systems Decomposition analysis Integrated land-use management of agroecosystems Sociometabolic profiles Biodiversity Sustainability We present an energy analysis of past and present farm systems aimed to contribute to their sustainability assessment. Looking at agroecosystems as a set of energy loops between nature and society, and adopting a farm-operator standpoint at landscape level to set the system boundaries, enthalpy values of energy carriers are accounted for net Final Produce going outside as well as for Biomass Reused cycling inside, and External Inputs are accounted using embodied values. Human Labour is accounted for the fraction of the energy intake of labouring people devoted to perform farm work, considering the local or external origin of their food basket. In this approach the proportion of internal Biomass Reused becomes a hallmark of organic farm systems that tend to save External Inputs, whereas industrial farming and livestock breeding in feedlots tend to get rid of re-uses replacing them with inputs coming from outside. Hence, decomposing the internal or external energy throughputs may bring to light their contrasting sociometabolic profiles. A Catalan case study in 1860 and 1990 is used as a test bench to show how revealing this decomposing analysis may be to plot the energy profiles of farm systems and their possible improvement pathways.

GREŠLOVÁ, P., GINGRICH, S., KRAUSMANN, F., CHROMÝ, P., JANČÁK, V. (2015): Social metabolism of Czech agriculture in the period 1830–2010. AUC Geographica, 50, 1, 23–35 http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/23361980.2015.84 – This article presents the concept of social metabolism and highlights its use for the analysis of the development of agriculture in Czechia. Similar to the general discipline of geography, social metabolism investigates the interactions between people and nature throughout time and space. In this article, we apply social metabolism methods, such as energy flow analysis (EFA), to investigate the transformation of Czech agriculture during the 1830–2010 period. The article is based on public data, as well as datasets compiled by the authors. The article documents the changes in Czechia’s historical development and its effect on land use and agriculture through the observation of several metabolic key indicators within their historical context. It primarily concentrates on changes in crop and livestock production, land use, and associated demographic and societal developments. We conclude that the strategies of all political regimes in the 19th and most of the 20th century increased the socio-metabolic output of agriculture, despite a very different political and economic background. Only the collapse of the Eastern Block resulted in a restructuring of the agricultural sector that produced a visible change in agricultural energy flows trends.

social metabolism, Czech agriculture, material and energy flow analysis (MEFA), land use, environmental history

IntroducThe creation, growth and decay of any social system, retaining myriads of life forms, have basically been the
concerns and exposition of energy. Social Metabolism envisage a natural connectivity amongst physical,
biological and social systems ad their under lying cybernetics. It is the flow of energy that drives the social
systems generating information, applying information and transforming the present social process in to a desired
social out come. Energy remains retained, shelved and configured within a cell and within a social capsule and
also is subject to a ruptured release for unlashing motivations and psychological capabilities. The present paper
examines the collision and collusion between imposed technologies vis-a-vis extraneous knowledge vs. intrinsic
vis-a-vis in situ knowledge. The rejection of innovation, prescribed by experts, has got a reverse osmosis impact
in the entire technology socialization process. Generally the rejected and discontinued technology has been
branded as laggard but the logic behind rejections not esteemed properly. The farming system performance
cannot be conceived as an indoor, interactive drama, rather it is a splendid disposition of social metabolism,
where in the flow in and flow out of energy can be audited and monitored for sustainable farming performance
of both the farmer and the manager or the both encapsulated in a single entity. The factors like cropping
intensity, size of holding, education, motivation, access to information, the socialization level of technology have
been found generating reticulate impact on the social osmosis through the intervening characters like, adoption,
rejection and discontinuance, on and over a spectrum of prescribed innovation.tion:

This is a case study on a small mountainous island in the Aegean Sea with the policy goal of preparing it to become member of UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves. While the local community opted for such an identity very early on, there are a number of obstacles to be overcome. The multidisciplinary research is based upon a sociometabolic approach and focuses on two issues: The transformation of agriculture, mainly herding of sheep and goats, and the shift to tourism. The degradation of the landscape caused by extensive roaming of goats and sheep constitute one of the major sustainability challenges of the island. We analyze farmers' opportunities and describe new initiatives to get out of this deadlock. The impacts of the transition to tourism are addressed from an infrastructural perspective: A shift from traditional stone buildings to bricks and concrete, the establishment of new roads and ports, and the challenges to water supply and wastewater removal, also with reference to the quality and amounts of wastes generated that need to be dealt with. The island has so far escaped mass tourism and attracts mainly eco-tourists who value its remoteness and wilderness. We discuss how to serve this clientele best in the future, and increase local job opportunities and income while maintaining environmental quality. Finally, we reflect upon emerging new forms of local collaboration and the impact of our research efforts on a sustainability transition that might be on its way.

Neste artigo apresenta-se a interpretação do grupo, sobre o processo e conceito de metabolismo social, económico e urbano com base no caso de estudo adoptado, as Marinhas de Sal de Rio Maior.
No desenvolvimento do trabalho, o conceito de metabolismo social é maioritariamente apoiado no artigo de Toledo & Molina (2007), devido às semelhanças das características reconhecidas no processo e no caso de estudo seleccionado. Sintetizando a linha base de metabolismo social, a análise morfológica urbana, social e económica das Marinhas de Sal de Rio Maior, surge como parte fundamental para estabelecer um modelo do seu processo metabólico. Ou seja, esta análise permite estabelecer relações entre o desenho urbano, a arquitectura e as actividades associadas à produção e extracção de sal. Da interpretação do conceito e da análise, resulta o processo metabólico das salinas, com base na sua paisagem urbana e natural, na intervenção e participação da Cooperativa e no desenvolvimento turístico, por parte da Câmara Municipal de Rio Maior.

This paper introduce the group’s interpretation about the process and concept of social, economic and urban metabolism, based on the study case selected, Marinhas de Sal de Rio Maior.
During work development, the concept of social metabolism is sustained by Toledo & Molina (2007) journal article, due to the characteristics’ similarities recognized among the process and the study case selected. Summarizing the base line of social metabolism, the morphological, urban, social and economics analysis, appears as fundamental part of the metabolic process for stablishing the rule model. It means, that this analysis will permit stablishing relations between the urban design, the architecture and the activities associated to the production and extraction of salt. Therefore, from the concept and analysis interpretation, it can generate the metabolic process of the salt works, based on its urban and natural landscape, on Cooperativa’s intervention and participation, and based on touristic development, from Câmara Municipal de Rio Maior.