The Industrial Ecology of Renewable Resources
Reid Lifset (1999). The Industrial Ecology of Renewable Resources. Zero Emissions Forum. United Nations University.
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Sub-type Discussion paper Author Reid Lifset Title The Industrial Ecology of Renewable Resources Series Title Zero Emissions Forum Publication Date 1999 Place of Publication Tokyo and Berlin Publisher United Nations University Pages 11 Language eng Abstract Discussions of renewable resources have historically focused on the threat of exhaustion, exploring whether rates of harvest exceed the rates which the resources replenish themselves. Such analyses are part of larger discussions of resource scarcity in which the prodigious consumption of humankind is compared to available stocks of all kinds of resources with an eye to the opportunities to avoid depletion. Economists and economic historians have raised doubts about this concern, arguing that a focus on depletion of resources is misguided because the price system provides a variety of powerful incentives to address scarcity. As the price of an increasingly scarce resource increases, the incentives for conservation, for improvements in extraction efficiency and for substitution increase. This in turn raises questions about the privileged place that renewable resources occupy in environmental policy discussions: if scarcity is not a major threat, why focus on renewability? The analysis of the concern with renewable resources, however, is not exhausted by discussions of material scarcity. As Robert Ayres points out, the most important scarcities are soil fertility, clean fresh water, clean fresh air, unspoiled landscapes, climatic stability, biological diversity, biological nutrient cycling and environmental waste assimilative capacity. In this sense, it is not the renewability of the often biologically-based resources that is at issue, but the specific value of the particular resources and the vulnerability of those resources to disruption by human activity. Put another way, the decision to make use of renewable resources needs to be subject to the same searching analysis as any other environmental choice. It is with respect to these concerns that industrial ecology, by employing a systems perspective, and especially a life-cycle perspective, provides a powerful window on the management of renewable resources. By applying industrial ecological perspectives to questions of energy, forestry, agriculture, biotechnology and the global nitrogen cycle, I hope to illustrate some of the insights that this emerging field can generate. UNBIS Thesaurus CONSUMPTION
SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION
RENEWABLE RESOURCES
INDUSTRIAL PLANNING
INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY
NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENTCopyright Holder United Nations University Copyright Year 1999 Copyright type All rights reserved ISSN 16094921 -
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