Material flow analysis, TMR and the MIPS concept: a contribution to the development of indicators for measuring changes in consumption and production patterns

International Journal of Sustainable Development

Volumn 2, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 491-505

  Spangenberg, J H ^a   Hinterberger, F ^a   Moll, S ^a   Schutz H ^a  

^a Institute for Ecological Economy Research   (Germany)

Author keywords

ecological rucksack; factor 10; material flows; MIPS; TMR; unspecific environmental risk

Indexed keywords

EID: 84881949522     PISSN: 09601406     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJSD.1999.004339     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. This could be avoided only if the resource productivity would grow at a sufficiently high rate and without any limit, as the formal models in the neoclassical tradition show – if not even predict; unfortunately, this is against both common sense and the laws of thermodynamics.
2. Hinterberger, F. et al. (1997) ‘Material flows vs. "natural capital": what makes an economy sustainable?’, Ecol. Economics, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 1–14.
3. Spangenberg, J.H. and Schmidt-Bleek, F. (1994) ‘How do we probe the physical boundaries for a sustainable society?’, in Sustainable Baltic Series, Vol. 9, Foundations of Sustainable Development, pp. 37–52.
4. The maximum tolerable stock of pollution has been called the critical load, and the maximum continuously supportable rate of flow, the carrying capacity.
5. Schmidt-Bleek, F. (1994) Wieviel Umwelt braucht der Mensch [How much environment do humans have to consume?], Birkhäuser, Berlin/Basel.
6. Rebound effects are here understood to include all effects that at least partly compensate efficiency gains by additional growth, owing to the reinvestment of the additional income from the efficiency gains.
7. This is no easy approach since the stocks are hard to quantify. Financial valuations based on current market prices are applicable only to marketable goods, and ‘willingness to pay’ analyses give information about the cultural values of the people interviewed but contain no information about the ecological value of the stocks concerned.
8. Weterings, P. and Opschoor, J.B. (1992) ‘The ecocapacity as a challenge to technological development’ Publikatie No. 74A, RMNO Rijswijk. We use it as defined in ref. 16, i.e. comprising material flows, energy consumption and land use.
9. Rees, W. E. (1994) ‘Sustainability, growth and employment. Towards an ecologically stable, economically secure, and socially satisfying future’, paper prepared for the IISD Employment and Sustainable Development Project, University of British Columbia, Canada 1994.
10. Here e.g. limestone, crude oil or hard coal are counted as one substance each. Substances without economic value are excluded. Estimates by Helmut Schütz (1997).
11. Extraction sites of minerals, energy carriers and water, where they enter the anthroposphere, but excluding air. An oilfield, for example, is considered one entry gate. Estimates by Helmut Schütz (1997).
12. Maier-Rigaud, G. (1998) ‘Folgen des Neoliberalismus für Beschäftigung und Umwelt [Consequences of Neoliberalism for Employment and Environment’, in Renner, A. and Hinterberger, F. (Editors) Zukunftsfähigkeit und Neoliberalismus [Sustainability and neoliberalism], Nomos Baden-Baden, pp. 157–174.
13. Simplicity is not only an important precondition for administrators and decision-makers to use the concept for policy guidance, but as well to communicate the goals set and the results achieved in a transparent and reliable way to a broader public. This is the key task for indicator development, see e.gSpangenberg, J. H. (1997) ‘Environmental space based indicators: a compass on the road towards sustainability’, in Moldan, B. and Billharz, S. (Editors) Sustainability Indicators, J. Wiley Ltd., London, pp. 119–125.
14. The state of the discussion in the expert group of the Convention on Biodiversity is summarized by Korn, H. (1999) ‘Stand der Biodiversitätsdebatte [Biodiversity – State of the Debate]’; an operational set of indicators for the preservation of biodiversity is proposed inSpangenberg, J.H. (1999) ‘Indikatoren für biologische Vielfalt [Indicators for biological diversity]’, both accepted for publication in Goerg, Ch. and Schramm, E. (Editors) Werte der Vielfalt [Values of Diversity], Metropolis, Marburg.
15. According to UN DESA, by December 1998 potential lead agencies for the development of indicators for land use had been identified, but no formal agreement had been reached (letter to experts, dated December 1998).
16. Spangenberg, J. H. (Editor) (1995), Towards Sustainable Europe, A Study from The Wuppertal Institute for Friends of the Earth Europe, FoE Publications, Luton.
17. See e.g. UNDP United Nations Development Program (1998) Human Development Report 1998, Changing today's consumption patterns – for tomorrow's Human Development, United Nations, New York.
18. Adriaanse et al. (1997) Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies, a joint study of the World Resources Institute, Wuppertal Institute, the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, and the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Planning, World Resources Institute Washington.
19. Jaenicke, M. et al. (1992) Umweltentlastung durch industriellen Strukturwandel? [Environmental relief through structural change?], Sigma, Berlin.
20. See ref. 5; a summary of the argument in English is given in Factor 10 Club (1994) The Carnoules Declaration, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal.
21. Jaenicke, M. (1993) Ökologisch tragfähige Entwicklung [Environmentally Sustainable Development], FFU Report 93 – 7, Free University of Berlin.
22. The intensity of use would be appropriate as interlinking indicator, if the underlying definition of materials was environmentally relevant; given the definition of materials to which it has been traditionally referred, and the fact that it is measured in relation to GDP, it is clearly a fully economic indicator. MIPS is analogous in that it has the same structure of a share between uses and results (efficiency measure) but is very different in that it links two well-distinguished objectives (nature on the one side and well-being on the other) and constitutes an intermediate objective expressing the extent to which they are reconciliated. The lower the MIPS, the higher the well-being obtainable from a given dissipation of the environment and/or the lower the dissipation necessary to obtain a given well-being.
23. Incidentally, it is quite obvious how closely this definition is linked to the ‘traditional’ setting of (materials) economics, according to which only ‘scarce’ resources matter.
24. de Bruin, S.M. and Opschoor, J.B. (1994) Is the economy ecologising?, Tinbergen Institute Working Paper TI94-65, Amsterdam.
25. See ref. 19.
26. Fussler, C. (1996) DrivingEco-Innovation, Pitman, London.
27. v. Weizsäcker, E.U., Lovins, A.B. and Lovins, H. (1996) Faktor 4, Droemer Knaur, München.
28. Liedtke, Ch. et al. (1998) ‘Applying material flow accounting’, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 131–143.
29. Tischner, U. and Schmidt-Bleek, F. (1993) ‘Designing goods with MIPS’, Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 8., pp. 479–484.
30. Tischner, U. (1993) Die Kühlkammer: Ein umweltfreundliches Kühlkonzept für den Haushalt, Bergische Universität Gesamthochschule Wuppertal.
31. Meta, A. (1994) Ein umweltfreundliches Gerät zur Bodenreinigung im Haushalt, Bergische Universität Gesamthochschule Wuppertal.
32. Spangenberg, J. H. and Bonniot, O. (1998) ‘Sustainability indicators – a compass on the road towards sustainability’, Wuppertal Paper No. 81, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal.
33. See Preimesberger W. (1994) ‘Ecological and economic assessment for different forms of product/service use’, paper for the workshop on eco-efficient services, Wuppertal.
34. Merten, T. et al. (1994) ‘Materialintensitätenanalyse von Grund-, Werk- und Baustoffen: Die Werkstoffe Beton und Stahl [Material intensity data: concrete and steel]', Wuppertal Paper No. 27, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal.
35. Manstein, C. and Liedtke, C. (1994) ‘Reihe: Materialintensitätenanalyse von Grund-, Werk- und Baustoffen, Der Werkstoff Aluminium [Material intensity data: aluminium]’, Wuppertal Paper No. 37, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal.
36. A complete overview of the methodology, including more details on the calculations and the necessary conventions mentioned in this paper, is given inSchmidt-Bleek, F. et al. (1998) MAIA, Einführung in die Materialintensitätsanalyse [Introduction to material intensity analysis], Birkhäuser Berlin/Basel, however only in German. For an English language reasoning and for references, see e.g. Spangenberg, J.H. et al. (1999) Material flow based indicators for environmental reporting, EEA Expert Corner Series, European Environment Agency Copenhagen.
37. To calculate the total material consumption of the whole German economy by physical input-output tables, the Federal Statistical Office Germany in cooperation with the Wuppertal Institute are presently using about 1500 individual categories of materials. This may be considered to be the highest level of disaggregation by a top-down approach for the calculation of regional material flow accounts.
38. Stiller, H. (1993) ‘Material consumption in transport infrastructure’, Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 8. pp. 467–472.
39. In an earlier version, this indicator was introduced under the name of Total Material Input (TMI) Bringezu, S. (1997) ‘Material flow indicators’, in Moldan, B. and Billharz, S. (Editors), Sustainability Indicators, J. Wiley Ltd., London, pp. 168–176.
40. See ref. 18.
41. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (1998) Measuring changes in consumption and production patterns: a set of indicators, United Nations, New York.
42. Spangenberg, J.H. and Scharnagl, A. (1998) ‘The SuE model: a decision-support tool’, Wuppertal Paper No. 86, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal.
43. Spangenberg, J.H. ‘Towards sustainability’, in Gleeson, B. and Low, N. (Editors), Government for the Environment, Macmillan, London, forthcoming.
44. Bringezu, S. ‘Comparison of the material basis of industrial economies’, in Bringezu, S. et al. (Editors), Analysis for Action. Proceedings of the ConAccount Conference 11-12 Sept. 1997 in Wuppertal, Wuppertal special, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal