Multiple-scale integrated assessment of societal metabolism: An analytical tool to study development and sustainability

This paper presents an analytical approach - called Multiple-Scale Integrated Assessment of Societal Metabolism (MSIASM) - for analyzing the development of human society in relation to sustainability. MSIASM builds on the dynamic nature of societal metabolism, which is stabilized by autocatalytic loops operating around attractor points. This approach permits the study of trajectories of development of society. MSIASM is unique in that it handles, in an integrated way, variables referring to non-equivalent descriptive domains (coming from various scientific disciplines) and data gathered at distinct hierarchical levels (national statistics, sector-specific data, household survey). MSIASM can be used to develop a "tool kit" to perform sustainability checks by assessing simultaneously the viability of societal metabolism in relation to a set of non-equivalent constraints (technical, ecological, economic, and social constraints). The "tool kit" is flexible, since it is based on general principles and procedures. It can easily be tailored to specific situations (particular history, context, and availability of data). The text presents: (i) an overview of the MSIASM approach; (ii) latest developments related to dynamics and historical trends analysis (using data referring to Spain and Ecuador); and (iii) possible applications of this method in relation to the development of decision support analytical tools.