In this course you will become familiar with the ideas of the water-energy-food nexus and transdisciplinary thinking. You will learn to see your community or country as a complex social-ecological system and to describe its water, energy and food metabolism in the form of a pattern, as well as to map the categories of social actors. We will provide you with the tools to measure the nexus elements and to analyze them in a coherent way across scales and dimensions of analysis. In this way, your quantitative analysis will become useful for informed decision-making. You will be able to detect and quantify dependence on non-renewable resources and externalization of environmental problems to other societies and ecosystems (a popular ‘solution’ in the western world). Practical case studies, from both developed and developing countries, will help you evaluate the state-of-play of a given community or country and to evaluate possible solutions. Last but not least, you will learn to see pressing social-ecological issues, such as energy poverty, water scarcity and inequity, from a radically different perspective, and to question everything you’ve been told so far. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Part of the results and case studies presented have been developed within two projects: MAGIC and PARTICIPIA. However, the course does not reflect the views of the funding institutions or of the project partners as a whole, and the case studies were presented purely with an educational and illustrative purpose.
The “tool-kit” to study feasibility, viability and desirability
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Del curso dictado por Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: the Nexus between Water, Energy and Food
11 calificaciones
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
11 calificaciones
De la lección
Module 7. Applications of MuSIASEM 2.0
How can the theoretical concepts explained so far be applied to practical examples? After introducing the basic building blocks of relational analysis needed for our applications, we will look at two real case examples: a nexus analysis of vegetable production in Almeria, and of a wind-powered desalination plant in the Canary Islands. By the end of this week you should be able to build processors and set up nexus analyses.
Conoce a los instructores
Mario GiampietroICREA Research Professor
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Andrea SaltelliGuest researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Tarik SerranoPost-Doc Researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
[MUSIC]
Hi welcome back to the last session of the lesson dedicated to
the application of rational analysis to the analysis
of metabolic pattern of social ecological systems.
This is a tough session as well.
And it is an attempt to put all the pieces that we've been discussing so
far in the previous six weeks together.
Into a toolkit that can be used to study feasibility, viability, and desirability.
Okay, so this 10 minute session will be a little longer.
Will be used to recall the concepts I introduced before to discuss
the viability, recall the concept introduced earlier to check feasibility,
and then visualize the relationship between the characteristic of
the metabolic pattern Illustrated using the rational analysis and
we will have basically a tool and then use matrix of the effect,
the environmental input matrix and the externalization matrix.
So let's go through this, let's start with something that we already did but
it's important now that we see all of the pieces together.
So when we discuss a viability with processes under human control,
we saw that the profile of our location human time is essential
in making possible metabolic pattern in this society.
So when talking about viability, we are looking at the view from the inside,
so assuming that we have the input that we can dump the waste without a problem.
Still, process under human control, define what you can do and you cannot do.
If you remember, we had in week six,
an analysis of human time allocation,
starting with the 8,760 hours per capita.
Everybody must ask, every society has.
A big part of this time cannot be used because of the dependent overheads and
because of physiological overhead.
So we have only 2,300 hours that are available that would be
theoretically available for work.
In reality.
There are no paid work chores, and
household chores, unpaid labor,
community that make it impossible to use these hours.
So basically Europe, Asia, you have between 700.
I think this is Spain 2012, 673 hours of paid work per capita available.
So, because of our welfare state,
basically a large faction of these hour goals in the service sector.
So basically this is more or less 544 we saw
in week 6 that more or less this is practical losses throughout Europe.
This imply, then we have only a very little amount of hours, for
doing agricultural manufacturing and energy mining.
If you want to look at this in a more organized way,
you have a part of hours that are lost because of the Household sector,
it has hours, then you have another 50 hours, I'm rounding the numbers.
For the service sector,
at least you more less unlimited amount of hours to do all the rest.
100, 120 hours they go manufacturing and construction,
you remember we saw this type of analysis.
For each type of sub-sector you need separate amount of hours
to do different things, then these leave for food supply and
energy supply, a very limited amount of hours.
30 hours in general for producing agricultural crops and
five for energy supplied is still our data taken from Spain, and
of course how much you are consuming here in terms of food.
Or in terms of energy path on the diet.
So the diet that the society is having in terms of
the typology of food you're eating.
If you're eating animal food, you are consuming more.
And energy, if you're consuming more electricity, depending on your method,
you can increase the consumption.
So what happen here is that basically, these type of analyses imply
a lot of constraints of what can be done in terms of viability.
Because with this type of overhead of time here,
service going here, it becomes very difficult
to be able to have a very wealthy state.
Unless you are importing a lot of
energy from elsewhere and relying heavily on fossil energy.
Okay, then the second things that we already saw, is to look at feasibility,
it's the reverse, you're assuming that inside you have no problem of time or
anything.
The only occupation, whether or not you have enough supply, side you have enough
sink side and how much you're dependent those stocks and filling of stocks.
So, this is about compatibility with external constraints in the processes
outside human control.
We saw already how to do that, you have to translate your internal consumption
of carriers in primary sources and then map the primary sources in GIS land use.
You can use all these in the machine here.
So you can start looking at
the type of constraints you could have from agriculture or type of land use.
And you're accounting, this way.
Okay, then you remember we had this when we
described the first lesson, whether or not we cooked or
used food in having enough water.
And then, this is the way to look at the the external constraints.
Now, can we put all these things together in a unified view
of how to characterize a sociological system.
Of course, this will require a lot of data, and you can do this using software.
We could just do a visualization of the relations.
I tried to do that, let's see if you can understand
what I'm trying to explain to you.
First of all, you are the society that is consuming total energy throughput,
total water throughput, total food throughput, total human activity,
land use, and power capacity.
Then you have the households,
services industry, primary are using a fraction of it.
So in terms of the Sudoku, you will have that in terms of viability.
Whatever combination you have here, the total energy must be the sum of these.
The total water must be the sum of these, and so on.
Then, these are the internal inputs that have to be used for
big capital of metabolizes.
And then you have a second check of the Sudoku whether or not these amounts
of consumption of energy, water, food, time, land, power capacity,
is decidable interaction to the function to be expressed at these functional types.
This fraction of that, this fraction of that.
A third set of constraints is feasibility or whether or
not we have enough gradients of our boundary condition in order to be able
to produce primary water sources, primary food sources.
The amount of energy current, low-grade current and medium current were consumed.
So this more or less is the logic of the analysis of
the feasibility, viability and desirability.
And then we could look at how this
intangible exactly place inside the society.
So let's start with, if you remember, we saw this at the beginning,
in endosomatic terms.
You are producing food, with food you are producing humans.
Humans are producing food.
This is the way it is going that humans are producing a solution
that helps the humans to reproduce themselves better.
Then at a certain point you are adding exosomatic input that is,
a technology tractor, then you have the same type of relation.
You are producing exosomatic inputs and the power capacity is
helping introduce more exosomatic inputs, excess amount of input power capacity,
means help in producing a solution and the system became more robust.
To do this type of double loop or when the somatic or exosomatic energy, and
you will have to have different fractional elements, energy, mining, agriculture,
household, manufacturing and construction, service and government.
And each of these are, agriculture will reproduce food, household
will produce productivity, energy and mining will produce exomatic input,
manufacturing and consumption reproduced by power capacity infrastructure.
And each of them is providing input to the others.
So the food goes to agriculture, household to manufacturing.
Set this to garments, that's after processing,
we also define the consumer here, then you have the human activity goes anywhere.
Then the energy goes everywhere and then the production goes everywhere.
If you try to make an analysis of this way, it becomes pretty messy.
It is difficult to see which of the compartments is limiting where or
how to organize the analysis of this flow.
For this reason we can use the processor,
in this case things become a little bit easier.
In the sense that Endosomatic food element,
people are represented the needs the processor in household.
So that processor is they are guaranteed by the processor.
Then you have a series of input flows.
They are going in different processor and households.
Some of it is going agriculture.
And then they are going into waste back to the environment.
This will be for industrial society.
We know exosomatic flows but then we can have exosomatic flows,
will be the technology that you need additional processor for
making the technology and to make the food or the energy in mining.
And the system became more complex.
But still, if you're using processor,
you can start handling better the analysis what's going on.
So then we will see that the total society can be seen as a gigantic processor
using internal flows from external flow and emitting flows.
And then this is generated by two compartments.
So this is week six, the bionomic pressure in the strength of exosomatic hyper cycle.
So you have primary sector in which agriculture or the sector and
energy mining are requiring this type of inputs.
Then, the secondary sector be it in manufacturing then the tertiary sector,
and then final consumer are supplying the different inputs required by the society,
each of them is covering one part of this input.
So you see that in this way it became easier to
make an analysis whether or not the flows are compatible with each other.
Then of course, the tertiary sector and the final consumer are required to
provide a into the know-how to operate the primary, secondary sector.
And they are the ones finding and
maintaining and updating data of the society at this level.
So let's see now if we can look at how the different tools of
the toolkits are operating.
We have an end use matrix on the top that is how much energy carrier, nutrient
carrier, blue water, power capacity are used at the level of the society.
And then for each of these,
whether the human activity is generated by the household sector.
The household sector is generating the human activity.
And the human activity is then distributed to the other sector.
To set things up for being a manufacturer.
Being a manufacturer is providing exosomatic device,
from there it goes to the other different sector.
The same [INAUDIBLE] from agriculture is producing food.
And food goes to all the sectors that are using it.
Then you have energy.
The energy sector is using energy but also producing energy for all the all.
So you see, this is the Sudoku effect.
And you can see that each of the sectors are using and
yielding to the other in the terms of flows, in the sample of the water.
The only system that is not
providing material flow in terms of supply to the other is the service.
And the end reality is, generally, subsidizing institution.
So it is not, per se, producing additive fuels.
So sometimes you have ecological funds, the bottom part, they are natural stocks,
depending if you are using renewable or non-renewable resources.
They are providing fuels for the society.
And these will be the external material flows getting into the society and
these are the internal material flows of the process.
So basically you start having here,
the end use matrix is looking at how the flows are used within the society.
This sudoku is whether or not the distribution of rows across the different
compartment is consistent with which the system is a variety.
On the lower part you have an externalization matrix is how much
you are importing things rather than using your local ecological fund and
natural stops.
And then you have an environmental impact matrix depending
how much you are stressing your natural resource.
Here, aquifer, animal, fishes, crops, primary energy sources.
So here on this interface, below you're looking at the feasibility of interface,
here you are looking at the viability and
at the top here you are dealing with the desirability.
Whether or not you like what you are consuming here, whether or
not you are capable of using what you are consuming to
guarantee the consumption of the other department, and whether or
not all the demand of loss and the waste out into the environment.
Our complaint with the local environment, and I'll match you are doing these waves,
analysing to order.
Sociological system.
You could have the same analysis done in a more bizarre way this end use matrix.
So whether or not you are happy with the batch that you are getting for
each of the sector is a news matter we said before.
The viability is whether or not the different sectors
are compatible with each other in terms of demand and supply of flows.
This is whether or not the local ecosystem so
when you are getting or dumping flows are stressed too much.
And whether or not your are externalizing to water,
both primary external inputs are also secondary inputs.
because when you are externalizing, importing from elsewhere,
you are not only importing from water, it will be from land.
And also with the label that is embodied in what you are consuming.
So I hope that this is clear.
I hope that at this point in time you should not arrive to a point you can see
this physicalization.
So we can conclude by saying that I tried this session to give an overview of
how we can under the non-equivalent quantitative representations
of relevant aspects of the metabolic pattern of a socioecological system.
By looking at these examples, you can immediately see that this approaches
automatically an omen, is not a given product on which you put numbers.
It depends on how you define things, you can define different compartment,
how you are deciding to account the flows.
But this is a good part, is not bad, the fact that this is not closed protocol.
Because you can see that this accounting, it is extremely transparent.
So you can decide what to do, how to take the analysis on
a specific situation using pariticipatory process.
And using GIS to consider special cases in special situations.
[SOUND] So, what is the take-home message that here we are using number,
because if you don't use number,
then it is impossible to understand what we are talking about.
It's only when you are forcing people to fight on deciding how to
measure how to find something that you can get real communication.
On the other hand, we have to be aware that numbers are stories.
Are not something absolutely deterministic or
some magic power of numbers.
So, numbers depend on the assumption and
goals on the type of explanation that we decide to do.
Therefore you have to have a system of quantification that can
be used to have a shared definition of your accounting your numbers.
So this approach that we are representing here is fully transparent.
And then it's totally open to the inclusion of different decisions about how
to define compartments, or accounting of the agricultural inputs.
So if you have to be able to set obligation probably they will come
out with different way of characterizing the things and
they would be very interesting to see the differences.
So this is why we call this approach quantitative story telling.
This is not something that is expected by rigorous modelers.
But still, we feel that this approach is more useful
than the use of mega models based on thousands of variables.
That have the goal of optimizing the present and
the future for everyone living in this planet.
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