Industrial Ecology: the Role of Manufactured Capital in Sustainability Helga Weisza,B,1, Sangwon Suhc, and T
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SPECIAL FEATURE: INTRODUCTION Industrial Ecology: The role of manufactured capital in sustainability Helga Weisza,b,1, Sangwon Suhc, and T. E. Graedeld The lack of quantitative results over two aResearch Domain Transdisciplinary Concepts & Methods, Potsdam Institute for Climate decades ago was paralleled by a compelling Impact Research, 14473 Potsdam, Germany; bDepartment of Cultural History and Theory and c underrepresentation of methodological sug- Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Bren gestions. Among the few exceptions in those School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, early papers were Ayres’ material flow anal- d CA 93106; and Center for Industrial Ecology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511 ysis of toxic heavy metals (17) and Duchin’s proposal to use economic input-output anal- ysis (18) to describe and analyze the meta- In 1992 PNAS presented a Special Feature with transition has increased in parallel, and the bolic connectedness among physical factors 22 contributions from a colloquium entitled technological and economic feasibility for such of production, industrial production, and “ ” Industrial Ecology, held at the National a transition has been demonstrated, especially consumptions sectors. Those two approaches Academy of Sciences of the United States in for the energy system (13, 14). have developed into core methods of Indus- Washington, DC (1). In these articles Industrial How did Industrial Ecology originally de- trial Ecology today (6, 19–25). The research Ecology was presented as an approach to un- fine its scope in what we now call sustain- articles included in the present Special Fea- derstand and ultimately optimize the total ma- ability science and what is its role today? If ture provide ample evidence for Industrial terial cycles of industrial processes (2). there is one compelling motif apparent in Ecology’s success in applying and further de- This PNAS issue presents the second Special virtually every paper of the 1992 Special veloping these methods and in quantifying Feature on Industrial Ecology, offering the Feature, it is a concentration on the physical the industrial metabolism for different indus- opportunity to reflect on the original goals basis of industrial societies as the analytical trial processes and across different scales in and approaches and to compare them with end point. This focus still persists, but its many of its ramifications. ’ Industrial Ecology s achievements and its per- scientific justification, which engendered lively In hindsight, it is also compelling to see tinent role within sustainability science. discussions in 1992, has changed significantly. that although the methods and the empirical The motivation to promote a new field as One original line of reasoning stressed the basis had been so much more limited, the originally expressed in the contributions of need to overcome the dominant paradigm of expressed range of Industrial Ecology goals the 1992 Special Feature is soberingly topical pollution control in the 1970s and 1980s, and topics was much broader 20 y ago than it (3, 4): (i) the recognition that human alter- which focused on technical end-of-pipe fixes, is today. This reflects the increasing special- ations of the Earth System are progressing at and treated use of natural resources (water, ization in sustainability science that has oc- an unprecedented pace; (ii)theinsightthat energy, biomass, metals, and minerals) and curred since that time. humankind has become a planetary force; disposal of wastes and pollutants to environ- Although a direct confrontation between and (iii) advocacy for a real-world sustainabil- mental media (such as air, water, and soil) as economists’ claim that, given the appropriate ity transition that would be as fundamental as separate subjects. The concept of industrial price signals, the market economy will effi- — the industrial revolution of the 18th century. metabolism that is, a holistic approach of ciently “squeeze the maximum human sat- Since the first Special Feature in 1992, the quantifying the flows of materials and energy isfaction out of the limited human and — pace of growth in global greenhouse gas into and out of society (15, 16) has since natural resources” (26) and the physicists’ emissions, material use, and energy use has then been instrumental in developing an in- approach that “long-term ecological sus- not slowed down or stopped, but rather has creasingly detailed and quantitative under- tainability is incompatible with an open – accelerated, especially after the year 2000 (5 standing of the life cycle of materials. materials cycle” (17) has become almost 7). Human-induced alterations of the Earth The specific Industrial Ecology approaches absent in Industrial Ecology, the original System have reached such a scale (8, 9) that a toward transforming the industrial metabo- ambition to reconcile the fragmented goals new term for the current geological epoch, lism to reduce its environmental impacts and diverting physical and economic rationales the Anthropocene, was proposed (10). Cli- the pressure on resources while maintaining has shifted to two related avenues. mate-sensitive tipping elements of the Earth its function for human well-being are still Oneavenueisthepragmaticcooperation System have been detected and described pretty much in place: enabling a circular between academia and industry jointly seek- (11). Those tipping elements (such as the materials flow economy, the importance of ing ways to simultaneously reduce economic Indian monsoon, the Amazon rainforest, or product design in recycling, the use of non- costs and metabolic throughput, such as in theGreenlandIceSheet)havebeenstable toxic materials, the mimicry of ecological research on eco-symbiosis (27), waste man- since the beginning of the Holocene but have systems, and decoupling economic growth agement and recycling (28–30), criticality of the potential to irreversibly flip into funda- from resource use, all of which were already mentally different regimes once triggered by a proposed in 1992. With a few exceptions, Author contributions: H.W. and S.S. designed research; and H.W., global mean temperature above certain thresh- however, the presentations in 1992 were S.S., and T.E.G. wrote the paper. ’ olds. Some of those thresholds appear to be largely devoid of data, whereas in today sIn- The authors declare no conflict of interest. within the reach of current climate-change dustrial Ecology data abound, and analysis 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: Helga. pathways (12). Advocacy for a sustainability and interpretations are becoming central. [email protected]. 6260–6264 | PNAS | May 19, 2015 | vol. 112 | no. 20 www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1506532112 Downloaded by guest on October 3, 2021 metals (31–33), or the long-term stock and time causing human-induced environmental Transforming the industrial metabolism to INTRODUCTION flow dynamics of basic industrial commodi- change at a planetary scale (34, 62, 63). reduce its environmental and resource im- SPECIAL FEATURE: ties (22, 34). The second avenue is to further pacts, while maintaining its function for hu- develop a theoretical concept to describe, The Role of Manufactured Capital for man well-being, is the crucial challenge for quantify, and eventually simulate the physical Sustainability sustainability. Meeting this challenge requires economy, thereby providing a solid, quanti- In recognition of the fundamental impor- a degree of understanding of key interactions tative description of the interface mediating tance of ecosystem services for human well- among human, natural, and manufactured the coevolution between social and environ- being, sustainability science has accumulated capital (Fig. 1) and their implications for mental change (35–37). a large body of work on natural and human sustainability. On the one hand, manufac- Some topics from the 1992 Special Fea- capital and their interrelations (64). Most tured capital provides essential goods, ser- ture deserve our attention, not because they interactions between natural and human vices, and shelter for human well-being. In quickly became part of the Industrial Ecol- capital are not direct, however, but are me- doing so it consumes natural resources and ogy mainstream but because they anticipated diated by manufactured capital in the form of induces anthropogenic environmental change, decisive research avenues that are only now industrial production facilities, communica- such as climate change and habitat loss. This, coming to the forefront. The ambition that tion devices, and extensively built infra- in turn, necessitates changes in human, nat- Industrial Ecology research would focus on structure. This aspect has thus far received ural, and manufactured capital and their in- the future has not quickly materialized, al- relatively little attention in sustainability sci- teractions. Examples are the rapid growth in though scenarios of the future have become ence. The manufactured capital is the entire renewable energy infrastructure to cope with more dominant in recent years (34, 38). It physical man-made stock, produced and re- climate change, the increasing possibility of seems that the founding generation severely produced by society. It comprises buildings, failures in material supply chains, and a surge underestimated the existing lack of knowledge transport, energy, water, and waste infra- in the speed