Resilience and Malleability of Social Metabolism

Recent events such as rising geopolitical tensions, severity of climate impacts and the Covid pandemic motivate efforts to better understand vulnerability, malleability and resilience of resource supply. Socio-Metabolic Research (SMR) has developed into a major interdisciplinary research field quantifying and analyzing societies’ resource supply and use patterns. However, the above-cited topics have so far not been studied, given key methodological gaps of the field. This project will forge a new research field capable of addressing these issues through integration of SMR with Complexity Science and Political Ecology, and undertaking a set of substantive analyses into these issues on several scales. Possible impacts of supply shocks on societies’ resource supply are massively understudied in SMR, mostly due to prevalence of descriptive approaches as well as static and/or linear models. This project will establish integrate socio-metabolic data and methods with big-data based network models from Complexity Science, thereby establishing capacities for modelling non-linearities and network effects in effects of shocks on economic processes. It will establish an unprecedented global socioeconomic metabolism database by merging two of the most advanced global databases, available at two participating research institutions, which will establish sufficient granularity to link resource flow data with actor-centered analyses of Political Ecology, which will underpin groundbreaking analyses of the malleability of social metabolism. Improved understanding of vulnerability and malleability will provide the basis for understanding the resilience of social metabolism under current, volatile and uncertain conditions. Objectives: (1) Establish a global high-resolution social metabolism database at a level of granularity allowing establishment of non-linear models and linkages with actor-based approaches; (2) Establish non-linear network models of social metabolism at global, national and subnational levels allowing to assess systemic effects of supply shocks; (3) Conduct six case studies of provisioning systems with high relevance for resource requirements and social wellbeing (food/nutrition, shelter, mobility) and assess their malleability; (4) Implement insights in global integrated assessment and environmentally-extended input-output models and draw general conclusions through a reflexive process Methods: Economy-wide Material and Energy Flow Analysis; Environmentally Extended Input-Output models; High-resolution mapping of social metabolism using remote sensing and other GIS science approaches; Complex system models using big data approaches; Policy analysis of provisioning systems; Integrated Assessment Models; Reflexive workshop and discussion formats including invited international guests.