Una perspectiva biofísica del cambio agrícola en Austria: dos sistemas agrarios en las décadas de 1830 y 1990

The paper argues for an ecologically-informed agricultural history. It introduces a model-based approach for the analysis of biophysical relations in local agricultural production systems. Data from the Franciscean Cadastre and statistical sources are used to quantify material and energy exchange processes between society and nature, and their development over time for two Austrian case studies. It will be demonstrated that livestock played an integrating and multifunctional role in optimizing land use at the local level in 19th century agriculture. The fossil fuel based industrialization of agriculture in the 20th Century resulted in the disintegration of local land use systems, turning them into throughput systems with high inputs and outputs. On the one hand, this allowed for tremendous increases in area and labour productivity but, on the other hand, significantly decreased the energy efficiency of agriculture

Socio-Ecological Regime Transitions in Austria and the United Kingdom

We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization. For two case studies, the United Kingdom and Austria, we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use, land use and labour organization. As the first step, the coal based industrial regime co-existed with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime. In the second step, the oil/electricity based industrial regime, agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio-ecological transition had been completed. Industrialization offers answers to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale. While today?s industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use, albeit at an unsustainable level, large parts of the global society are in the midst of the old industrial transition. This poses severe problems for global sustainability.socio-ecological regimes, metabolic profiles, transition, social metabolism, energy flows, land use, labour, industrialization, United Kingdom, Austria

Socio-metabolic Transitions in Developing Asia

A possible sustainability transition in developing Asia needs to complement the ongoing transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime. As is known from other world regions, an agrarian-industrial transition involves a major increase in material and energy flows (corresponding to a 2-4 fold increase in the demand for raw materials and energy). The socio-metabolic profile of the South-East Asian region still shows relatively low material and energy consumption per capita, suggesting that major growth may follow. Infrastructures that are closely bound-up in bulk material flows (transport, energy and food sectors) will be critical to future developments. The paper illustrates the challenge and potential solutions from a number of case studies.socio-ecological regime, metabolic profile, industrial transformation, developing Asia, sustainability transition

Industrialisierung als sozialökologischer Regimewechsel

Eine umwelthistorische Perspektive zeigt, dass mit der Industrialisierung ein Nachhaltigkeits-Problem gegen ein anderes eingetauscht wurde. Nachhaltige Entwicklung bedarf demnach nicht bloß einer technischen Kurskorrektur, sondern erfordert eine sehr grundlegende Veränderung im sozialen Metabolismus

Chapitre 1 - Les transitions socio-métaboliques globales

La plupart des recherches socio-écologiques de long terme analysent les interrelations dynamiques entre écosystèmes et sociétés dans des contextes très localisés. Pourtant, les changements technologiques et le développement économique au niveau global ont des impacts significatifs sur les interactions nature-société ayant lieu dans des contextes régionaux spécifiques. Il est donc fondamental de comprendre comm..

Bioenergy: how much can we expect for 2050?

Estimates of global primary bioenergy potentials in the literature span almost three orders of magnitude. We narrow that range by discussing biophysical constraints on bioenergy potentials resulting from plant growth (NPP) and its current human use. In the last 30 years, terrestrial NPP was almost constant near 54 PgC yr−1, despite massive efforts to increase yields in agriculture and forestry. The global human appropriation of terrestrial plant production has doubled in the last century. We estimate the maximum physical potential of the world\u27s total land area outside croplands, infrastructure, wilderness and denser forests to deliver bioenergy at approximately 190 EJ yr−1. These pasture lands, sparser woodlands, savannas and tundras are already used heavily for grazing and store abundant carbon; they would have to be entirely converted to bioenergy and intensive forage production to provide that amount of energy. Such a high level of bioenergy supply would roughly double the global human biomass harvest, with far-reaching effects on biodiversity, ecosystems and food supply. Identifying sustainable levels of bioenergy and finding ways to integrate bioenergy with food supply and ecological conservation goals remains a huge and pressing scientific challenge

India's biophysical economy, 1961-2008. Sustainability in a national and global context

Ajuts: This research was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) within the projects P21012- G11 and P20812-G11. It contributes to the EJOLT project funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (http://www.ejolt.org/), the Global Land Project (http://www.globallandproject.org) and to Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) initiatives within LTER Europe (http://www.lter-europe.net)India's economic growth in the last decade has raised several concerns in terms of its present and future resource demands for materials and energy. While per capita resource consumption is still extremely modest but on the rise, its sheer population qualifies India as a fast growing giant with material and energy throughput that is growing rapidly . If such national and local trends continue, the challenges for regional, national as well as global sustainability are immense in terms of future resource availability, social conflicts, pressure on land and ecosystems and atmospheric emissions. Using the concepts of social metabolism and material flow analysis, this paper presents an original study quantifying resource use trajectories for India from 1961 up to 2008. We argue for India's need to grow in order to be able to provide a reasonable material standard of living for its vast population. To this end, the challenge is in avoiding the precarious path so far followed by industrialised countries in Europe and Asia, but to opt for a regime shift towards sustainability in terms of resource use by building on a host of promising examples and taking opportunities of existing niches to make India a trendsetter

Diverse types of knowledge on a plate: a multi-perspective and multi-method approach for the transformation of urban food systems towards sustainable diets

Urbanization processes are accompanied by growing global challenges for food systems. Urban actors are increasingly striving to address these challenges through a focus on sustainable diets. However, transforming food systems towards more sustainable diets is challenging and it is unclear what the local scope of action might be. Co-production of knowledge between science and non-science is particularly useful for analysing context-specific solutions and promise to result in more robust socio-economic, political and technical solutions. Thus, this paper aims to integrate different types and sources of knowledge to understand urban food systems transformation towards a more sustainable diet in Vienna; and, second, to analyse and reflect on the difficulties and ways forward to integrate diverse actors’ perspectives, multiple methods and epistemologies. We created different future scenarios that illustrate the synergies and trade-offs of various bundles of measures and the interactions among single dimensions of sustainable diets. These scenarios show that there is plenty of scope for local action, but co-ordination across diverse groups, interests, and types of knowledge is necessary to overcome lock-ins

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)

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 reuses 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