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Contributions of sociometabolic research to sustainability science

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 173–184 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Recent high-level agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals aim at mitigating climate change, ecological degradation and biodiversity loss while pursuing social goals such as reducing hunger or poverty. Systemic approaches bridging natural and social sciences are required to support these agendas. The surging human use of biophysical resources (materials, energy) results from the pursuit of social and economic goals, while driving global environmental change. Sociometabolic research links the study of socioeconomic processes with biophysical processes and thus plays a pivotal role in understanding society–nature interactions. It includes a broad range of systems science approaches for measuring, analysing and modelling of biophysical stocks and flows as well as the services they provide to society. Here we outline and systematize major sociometabolic research traditions that study the biophysical basis of economic activity: urban metabolism, the multiscale integrated assessment of societal and ecosystem metabolism, biophysical economics, material and energy flow analysis, and environmentally extended input–output analysis. Examples from recent research demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of sociometabolic research. We discuss future research directions that could also help to enrich related fields.

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Fig. 1: SMR systematically quantifies flows of biophysical resources associated with defined social systems or their components.
Fig. 2: Family tree of research traditions from social sciences (left side) and natural sciences (right side) that inspire current SMR.
Fig. 3: Scale and dynamics of global social metabolism in the Anthropocene, illustrating the systemic interlinkages between resource use, socioeconomic dynamics and ensuing waste and emissions.
Fig. 4: Biophysical resource use within national-political boundaries.
Fig. 5: Socioeconomic metabolism of steel.
Fig. 6: The sociometabolic basis of human well-being and social progress, as measured through the SPI.

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Data availability

The analyses shown in Figs. 3–6 rely on publicly available data from the cited references.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge research funding from the European Research Council ERC (MAT_STOCKS, grant 741950) and from the Austrian Science Fund FWF (projects MISO P27590 and GELUC P29130-G27). We thank M. Podovac for help with Figs. 1 and 2 and M. Niedertscheider for help with the maps in Fig. 3.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Dominik Wiedenhofer, Stefan Pauliuk, Marina Fischer-Kowalski.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Vienna, Austria

    Helmut Haberl, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Fridolin Krausmann & Marina Fischer-Kowalski

  2. Industrial Ecology Group, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Stefan Pauliuk

  3. Industrial Ecology Programme, Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

    Daniel B. Müller

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Contributions

All authors contributed to reviewing and discussing literature and writing the article. H.H. and D.W. conceived Fig. 1. M.F.-K. conceived Fig. 2. F.K. and D.W. compiled data and drafted Fig. 3. D.W. compiled data and drafted Fig. 4. S.P. compiled data and drafted Fig. 5. D.W. and S.P. compiled data and drafted Fig. 6. H.H. structured the paper and discussions. All authors contributed to writing the text.

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Correspondence to Helmut Haberl.

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Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Pauliuk, S. et al. Contributions of sociometabolic research to sustainability science. Nat Sustain 2, 173–184 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0225-2

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