The current and potential role of urban metabolism studies to analyze the role of food in urban sustainability

Food supply chains are essential for urban sustainability. To reflect on the state of knowledge on urban food flows in urban metabolism research, and the actual and potential role of urban metabolism studies to tackle food sustainability in cities, we systematically review scientific research on food from an urban metabolism perspective and apply statistical and thematic analyses. The analysis of 89 studies provides insights as to the relation between food supply and (environmental and social dimensions of) urban sustainability. First, food is an important contributor to urban environmental impacts, if a consumption-based approach is adopted. Secondly, the social impacts of urban food supply remain scarcely studied in urban metabolism research, but emerging results on public health, malnutrition, and food waste appear promising. In parallel, we find that the findings of the studies fail to engage with debates present in the broader literature, such as that of food justice. Our analysis shows that most studies focus on large cities in high-income, data-rich countries. This limits our understanding of global urban food supply. Existing studies use innovative mixed-methods to produce robust accounts of urban food flows in data-scarce contexts; expanding these accounts is necessary to get a better understanding of how urban food supply and its diverse impacts in terms of environmental and social sustainability may vary across cities, a necessary step for the urban metabolism literature to contribute to current debates around food sustainability and justice.     

Companies on the Scale

A determination of the sustainability performance of a company ought to fulfill certain requirements. It has to take into account the direct impacts from on-site processes as well as indirect impacts embodied in the supply chains of a company. This life cycle thinking is the common theme of popular footprint analyses, such as carbon, ecological, or water footprinting. All these indicators can be incorporated into one common and consistent accounting and reporting scheme based on economic input−output analysis, extended with data from all three dimensions of sustainability. We introduce such a triple-bottom-line accounting framework and software tool and apply it in a case study of a small company in the United Kingdom. Results include absolute impacts and relative intensities of indicators and are put into perspective by a benchmark comparison with the economic sector to which the company belongs. Production layer decomposition and structural path analysis provide further valuable detail, identifying the amount and location of triple-bottom-line impacts in individual upstream supply chains. The concept of shared responsibility has been applied to avoid double-counting and noncomparability of results. Although in this work we employ a single-region model for the sake of illustration, we discuss how to extend our ideas to international supply chains. We discuss the limitations of the approach and the implications for corporate sustainability.     

A Hybrid Approach for Assessing the Multi‐Scale Impacts of Urban Resource Use: Transportation in Phoenix,Arizona

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and urban metabolism (UM) are popular approaches for urban system environmental assessment. However, both approaches have challenges when used across spatial scales. LCA tends to decompose systemic information into micro‐level functional units that mask complexity and purpose, whereas UM typically equates aggregated material and energy flows with impacts and is not ideal for revealing the mechanisms or alternatives available to reduce systemic environmental risks. This study explores the value of integrating UM with LCA, using vehicle transportation in the Phoenix metropolitan area as an illustrative case study. Where other studies have focused on the use of LCA providing upstream supply‐chain impacts for UM, we assert that the broader value of the integrated approach is in (1) the ability to cross scales (from micro to macro) in environmental assessment and (2) establishing an analysis that captures function and complexity in urban systems. The results for Phoenix show the complexity in resource supply chains and critical infrastructure services, how impacts accrue well beyond geopolitical boundaries where activities occur, and potential system vulnerabilities.     

Going Organic: Converting Patagonia's Cotton Product Line

The integration of industrial ecology principles into a business may mean significant changes in its customary activities. In this article, we present a case study of a decision by Patagonia, a manufacturer and distributor of clothing and gear for outdoor sports, to use only organically grown cotton for our cotton products as of spring I996.We describe the history of our efforts to reduce our environmental impacts, the relationship between understanding the life-cycle impacts of garments in general and cotton in particular onour decision, and the changes required throughout the company to implement the decision. Although initial salesof the organic cotton products have met or exceeded expectations, most customers continue to buy our productsfor traditional reasons: quality, fit, styling, and brand. Westruggle to change consumer perceptions about the environmental significance of their purchases and influencemajor apparel manufacturers to make a similar switch. Our experience suggests, first, that consumers and industryneed to understand the principles of industrial ecology and, second, that environmental improvements must be integrated into all aspects of operations (e.g., marketing). Anunexpected benefit of the decision was an increase in our knowledge about the garment life cycle, which in turn improves our ability to develop new fabrics when off-the-shelf products do not meet our needs. Much remains to bedone, howevel; to reduce impacts associated with other aspects Of our products and corporate activities.     

Life Cycle Attribute Assessment

Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) have recently turned their attention to social issues in the supply chain. The United Nations life cycle initiative's social LCA task force has completed its guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products, and awareness of managing upstream corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues has risen due to the growing popularity of LCA. This article explores one approach to assessing social issues in the supply chain—life cycle attribute assessment (LCAA). The approach was originally proposed by Gregory Norris in 2006, and we present here a case study. LCAA builds on the theoretical structure of environmental LCA to construct a supply chain model. Instead of calculating quantitative impacts, however, it asks the question “What percentage of my supply chain has attribute X?” X may represent a certification from a CSR body or a self‐defined attribute, such as “is locally produced.” We believe LCAA may serve as an aid to discussions of how current and popular CSR indicators may be integrated into a supply chain model. The case study demonstrates the structure of LCAA, which is very similar to that of traditional environmental LCA. A labor hours data set was developed as a satellite matrix to determine number of worker hours in a greenhouse tomato supply. Data from the Quebec tomato producer were used to analyze how the company performed on eight sample LCAA indicators, and conclusions were drawn about where the company should focus CSR efforts.     

转型期城市生态学前沿研究进展

城市是一类以人类活动为中心听社会－经济－自然复合生态系统。城市人类活动对局地、区域和全球环境的胁迫效应,自然生态系统的响应机制,城市时、空、量、构、序的耦合规律、动力学机制和控制论方法是当前国际社会和学术界关注的热点。介绍了转型期城市人类生态影响研究的一些主要国际科学计划,如ＳＣＯＰＥ及ＩＨＤＰ等,综述了城市生态学研究三大前沿领域的国际研究动向和案例,即人居生态学、产业生态学和城镇生命支持系统生态     

How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland

This article links databases on household consumption, industrial production, economic turnover, employment, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions into a spatially explicit model. The causal sequence starts with households demanding a certain consumer basket. This demand requires production in a complex supply-chain network of interdependent industry sectors. Even though the household may be confined to a particular geographical location, say a dwelling in a city, the industries producing the indirect inputs for the commodities that the household demands will be dispersed all over Australia and probably beyond. Industrial production represents local points of economic activity, employment, water use, and emissions that have local economic, social, and environmental impacts. The consumer basket of a typical household is followed in Australia's two largest cities—Sydney and Melbourne—along its upstream supply chains and to numerous production sites within Australia. The spatial spread is described by means of a detailed regional interindustry model. Through industry-specific emissions profiles, industrial production is then translated into local impacts. We show that annually a typical household is responsible for producing approximately 80 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, uses around 3 million liters of water, causes about A$140,000 to circulate in the wider economy, and provides labor worth just under three full-time employment-years. We also introduce maps that visually demonstrate how a very localized household affects the environment across an entire continent. Our model is unprecedented in its spatial and sectoral detail, at least for Australia.     

Same Supply Chain,Different Models: Integrating Perspectives from Life Cycle Assessment and Supply Chain Management

Within industrial ecology, there is a substantial community focusing on life cycle assessment (LCA) and corresponding tools and methods. Within the field of supply chain management, an increasing community is converging around sustainable supply chains. These two communities study the same underlying systems, but bring different perspectives to bear. We review seven issues that arise at this intersection of LCA and supply chain management, with the aim of illustrating how both communities can enrich each other by closer interaction. We conclude with some suggestions for how the two communities can further collaborate.     

Understanding the Organization of Industrial Ecosystems

Industrial symbiosis (IS) has been used to describe the physical exchange and shared management of input and output materials by geographically proximate firms. Firms that engage in IS are said to belong to an industrial ecosystem. Symbiosis has been found to be motivated by economic considerations, such as lowering costs for waste disposal, as well as by environmental ones, such as accessing limited water supplies. Communication and trust among managers are thought to play important roles in exchanges; however, empirical studies have not been previously conducted. This study used social network analysis (SNA) to identify the prevalence of industrial symbiosis linkages in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. The study quantified patterns in various relationships among firms and managers, including formal relations through supply chains, and informal ones through interpersonal interactions. SNA and statistical methods were used to explore how these ties correlate with observed industrial symbiosis activities. IS linkages were found to be less prevalent than product sales among firms and were concentrated among pharmaceutical firms at the core of the regional network. Trust among managers and position in the social hierarchy were found to be correlated with IS but not supply chain links. SNA was useful for examining the organization of different relationships in the industrial ecosystem, but contextual information is still needed to add meaning to its findings.     

Political ecology and environmental management in the Loess Plateau,China

This paper explores the changing political ecology of soil and water management—the articulation of physical and political-economic processes—in the Loess Plateau of north-central China. Market-oriented reforms and the shift from collective to household farming have created a diverse array of tenure, management, and financing arrangements. In the process relationships between farm households, the collective, and the state have been altered, with profound implications for land use and sustainability. The paper reviews the political ecology approach and its relevance to environmental management in China. An outline of the physical and economic context of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau is followed by examination of the impact of reform on rural environmental management. Local innovations in the organization of environmental management are highlighted. The conclusion comments on the utility of the regional political ecology approach and suggests some critical issues for further research.     

Linking Industrial Ecology with Business Strategy: Creating Value for Green Product Design

As organizations practice environmental design, some discover green design positively impacts business performance. This article demonstrates how an organization can employ existing design methods and tools with the Kano technique to craft an environmental product design strategy that enhances its business strategy. These tools expand the toolbox of the industrial ecologist and enable the link between green design and business improvement. The Kano technique was developed in the 1980s to facilitate design of innovative products. We also introduce terminology and concepts such as “voices of the environment,”“environmental knowledge management,”“environmental profile,” and “environmental product attribute” in order to bridge the gap between industrial ecology and business concerns. To demonstrate how an organization can find the synergy between business value and environmental value, this article describes three activities and their corresponding tools and exhibits their use with industry examples. First, we present techniques by which designers can identify and prioritize customers and stakeholders who voice both environmental and business concerns. Second, we describe how voice‐of‐the‐customer translation techniques can be used to efficiently collect and translate data from these customers and stakeholders into critical environmental product and service attributes. Third, we discuss how the Kano technique can be used to connect green design to business strategy by making visible the variety of stakeholder and customer perceptions of these critical environmental attributes. Examples then demonstrate how those perceptions suggest appropriate approaches for integrating the critical environmental attributes into product and business strategy. Finally, we provide examples based on work done with General Electric Medical Systems (GEMS) to illustrate the design of products that improve environmental performance while adding greater perceived value for numerous customers along material‐flow value chains.     

Theoretical and empirical perspectives on the scaling of supply and demand in social insect colonies

One of the central questions in physiological ecology is how energetic constraints affect organismal performance and the dynamics of ecological systems. Social insect colonies integrate the balance of supply and demand across levels of biological organization such that the individual components are simultaneously serving as the supply transport network and also the source of energetic demand. An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that the per‐capita metabolic rates of individuals within social insect colonies decrease with increasing colony size, a metabolic hypometry much like the pattern exhibited by individual organisms. An important question is thus, whether this scaling pattern is a result of an energetic supply constraint or evidence for an emergent economy of scale. This review synthesizes theoretical models and results from empirical studies on the scaling of resource supply and demand in social insect colonies. Scaling in biology is a powerful tool to unify the study of diverse concepts and organisms; increased integration of mechanistic realism into metabolic models will improve our understanding of the evolution of complex biological systems.     

Quantitative Industrial Ecology & Ecological Economics

This article presents a theoretical foundation for integrating three otherwise disparate areas of human thought and understanding: technology, ecology, and economics. The article presents the mathematical foundations for quantifying the biophysical (mass, energy, and informational) aspects of economic production systems and their interaction with natural systems. These mathematical relationships are required for the on-going ecological and economic design of technological production networks by enterprise management, thereby extending the scope and scale of quantitative engineering design from the domain of individual technologies to networks of technologies at enterprise, corporate, and industrial levels of technological organization.
The analytical framework extends the practical utility of ecology, as an applied natural science, from passive environmental monitoring and prediction to active institutional participation in an informational feedback control strategy pursuant to economically abating the ecological risks of industrial growth, development, and modernization at local, regional, and global levels of ecological organization. And it provides the applied natural-science underpinnings and the informational feedback control institutions required to support economics as an applied social science. In this context ecological risk-control pricing is presented as a supplement to conventional economic policies at local, regional, and national levels of economic organization.     

Some theoretical considerations: From landscape ecology to waterscape ecology

Being inspired in the process of teaching and studying on tourism geography and heritage landscapes, the author attempts to broaden the scope of traditional studies in landscape ecology. Upon reviewing the progress, limitations and boundaries of landscape ecology, he criticizes the negligence of waterscapes by academics. The author further examines some waterscape conservation policy programs practiced by different nations. These include 10 National Seashores, 4 National Lakeshores, 4 National Rivers, 13 National Marine Sanctuaries and 1 Marine National Monument in USA, 13 Marine National Parks, 11 Marine Sanctuaries and 4 multiple use Marine Reserves in the State of Victoria, Australia, 3 Marine Nature Reserves and 43 Heritage Coasts in UK, and 272 National Water Parks in China. Based on these explorations, the author proposes a few hypotheses on waterscape ecology. Finally, he concludes that as one among many sub-disciplines of applied ecology, waterscape ecology can only achieve its full-fledged growth through concerted efforts among academics, and the supports from both governments and non-government organizations. Meanwhile, the site-specific policy practices with the rapid increasing social needs will likely facilitate the development of this infant school. Hopefully, the birth and development of waterscape ecology will contribute to the prosperity of global academics and the maintenance of earth level environmental health.     

Some theoretical considerations: From landscape ecology to waterscape ecology

Being inspired in the process of teaching and studying on tourism geography and heritage landscapes, the author attempts to broaden the scope of traditional studies in landscape ecology. Upon reviewing the progress, limitations and boundaries of landscape ecology, he criticizes the negligence of waterscapes by academics. The author further examines some waterscape conservation policy programs practiced by different nations. These include 10 National Seashores, 4 National Lakeshores, 4 National Rivers, 13 National Marine Sanctuaries and 1 Marine National Monument in USA, 13 Marine National Parks, 11 Marine Sanctuaries and 4 multiple use Marine Reserves in the State of Victoria, Australia, 3 Marine Nature Reserves and 43 Heritage Coasts in UK, and 272 National Water Parks in China. Based on these explorations, the author proposes a few hypotheses on waterscape ecology. Finally, he concludes that as one among many sub-disciplines of applied ecology, waterscape ecology can only achieve its full-fledged growth through concerted efforts among academics, and the supports from both governments and non-government organizations. Meanwhile, the site-specific policy practices with the rapid increasing social needs will likely facilitate the development of this infant school. Hopefully, the birth and development of waterscape ecology will contribute to the prosperity of global academics and the maintenance of earth level environmental health.     

Individuality in seaweeds and why we need to care

Documenting the causes and consequences of intraspecific variation forms the foundation of much of evolutionary ecology. In this Perspectives piece, we review the importance of individual variation in ecology and evolution, argue that contemporary phycology often overlooks this foundational biological unit, and highlight how this lack of attention has potentially constrained our understanding of seaweeds. We then provide some suggestions of promising but underrepresented approaches, for instance: conducting more studies and analyses at the level of the individual; designing studies to evaluate heritability and genetic regulation of traits; and measuring associations between individual variation in functional traits and ecological outcomes. We close by highlighting areas of phycological research (e.g., population biology, ecology, aquaculture, climate change management) that could benefit immediately from including a focus on individual variation. Algae, for their part, provide us with a powerful and diverse set of ecological and evolutionary traits to explore these topics. There is much to be discovered.     

Human rights,environment, and development: The dispossession of fishing communities on Lake Malawi

In a growing number of cases throughout Africa, communities' resource bases are being undermined or appropriated by outsiders, a process which seriously threatens the continuation of local cultures and livelihoods. In this article, we use a political ecology framework to examine how the linked processes of economic development, political power, and environmental change are transgressing the rights of fishing communities on the shores of Lake Malawi. In the cases described, these communities, or community members within them, find themselves powerless to prevent the expropriation of the resources over which they previously had either legal or customary control. Thus, it is not the economic processes of dispossession alone which lead to human rights violations but rather dispossession combined with an authoritarian political context.     

社会经济代谢研究:内涵、发现和展望

社会经济代谢是指由于人类活动导致的物质和能量在社会经济系统内部和边界上的迁移和转换。社会经济代谢研究已经成为产业生态学的核心领域。本文结合典型案例介绍了社会经济代谢研究的内涵和基本步骤,总结了社会经济代谢研究的主要发现:提供了追踪物质在社会经济系统的来源、去向和流动路径的方法与模型;揭示了物质材料及其社会经济代谢过程对现代化生产和生活方式的支撑作用;阐明了人类活动驱动与物质代谢相关的生态环境问题的机制;提供了评估资源利用效率、资源供需趋势和城市矿产开发潜力的模型与基础数据。最后指出了社会经济代谢研究的发展方向:增加研究对象并深化对每种对象的研究精度;拓展或细化研究系统的时空边界;引入并融合新的数据来源和研究方法;将社会经济代谢中的物质流对接到与其相关的生态环境影响;建立可共享、可拓展、可累积的数据平台。     

环境投入产出分析在产业生态学中的应用

综述了环境投入产出分析的基本知识及其在产业生态学领域的应用。环境投入产出分析的核心是投入产出模型,包括价值型投入产出模型、实物型投入产出模型和混合型投入产出模型。环境投入产出分析在产业生态学领域主要用于环境压力核算、生命周期评估、社会经济因素相对贡献分析、产业链路径分析、风险影响分析和环境网络分析。同时,相关学者进行环境投入产出数据库开发,给环境投入产出分析提供便捷、标准化的数据渠道。讨论了环境投入产出分析的若干发展趋势。     

Pyrogeography,historical ecology,and the human dimensions of fire regimes

In our 2011 synthesis (Bowman et al., Journal of Biogeography, 2011, 38 , 2223–2236), we argued for a holistic approach to human issues in fire science that we term ‘pyrogeography’. Coughlan & Petty (Journal of Biogeography, 2013, 40 , 1010–1012) critiqued our paper on the grounds that our ‘pyric phase’ model was built on outdated views of cultural development, claiming we developed it to be the unifying explanatory framework for all human–fire sciences. Rather, they suggest that ‘historical ecology’ could provide such a framework. We used the ‘pyric transition’ for multiple purposes but did not offer it as an exclusive explanatory framework for pyrogeography. Although ‘historical ecology’ is one of many useful approaches to studying human–fire relationships, scholars should also look to political and evolutionary ecology, ecosystems and complexity theories, as well as empirical generalizations to build an interdisciplinary fire science that incorporates human, ecological and biophysical dimensions of fire regimes.