Contributions of sociometabolic research to sustainability science

Helmut Haberl (), Dominik Wiedenhofer, Stefan Pauliuk, Fridolin Krausmann, Daniel B. Müller and Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Additional contact information
Helmut Haberl: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Dominik Wiedenhofer: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Stefan Pauliuk: University of Freiburg
Fridolin Krausmann: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Daniel B. Müller: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Marina Fischer-Kowalski: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Nature Sustainability, 2019, vol. 2, issue 3, 173-184

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0225-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:2:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1038_s41893-019-0225-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-019-0225-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().