Stock-Flow-Services Nexus, IN: EU Research, Winter 2019, p 39.
Sustainability transformations imply fundamental changes in the societal use of biophysical resources. Current socioeconomic metabolism research traces flows of energy, materials or substances to capture resource use: input of raw materials or energy, their fate in production and consumption, and the discharge of wastes and emissions. This approach has yielded important insights into eco-efficiency and long-term drivers of resource use. Due to its focus on flows, socio-metabolic research has not yet fully incorporated material stocks or their services. MAT_STOCKS addresses this gap by developing a consistent typology, indicators and databases of material stocks and their services, building upon economy-wide material flow analysis and dynamic modelling approaches. It creates a comprehensive, global, national-level, validated material stocks and services database as well as high-resolution maps of material stocks from remote-sensing data. These data allow analyzing the stock-flow-service nexus and underpin highly innovative indicators of eco-efficiency overcoming limitations of current approaches, which mainly relate resource use or emissions to population and GDP. New insights on stock-flow-service relations, the relevance of spatial patterns and options and limitations for decoupling are used to create a dynamic scenario modelling approach to assess option spaces for transformations towards a sustainable socio-economic metabolism. MAT_STOCKS thereby aims to identify barriers and leverage points for future sustainability transformations and the SDGs, and elucidate their socio-ecological and political implications. Unravelling the stock-flow-service nexus provides a crucial missing link in socio-metabolic research because it explains why, how and where patterns of material and energy use change or remain locked-in. Thereby, important analytical insights are introduced into the largely normative and local discourses on the transformation towards a sustainable society.
Das Mat_Stocks Projekt mit deutsch-sprachigem Web-Auftritt auf dem neuen Nachhaltigkeitsportal der Humboldt Universität Berlin
"Die Menschheit als gefräßiger Organismus, der sich das, was die Erde an Ressourcen hervorbringt, einverleibt, es verdaut und verarbeitet und als Müll oder Abgase wieder ausscheidet – diese Metapher fasst grob zusammen, was hinter dem Konzept des sozialen Metabolismus steckt. Im Projekt MAT_STOCKS untersuchen Umweltforscher der Universität für Bodenkultur in Wien und der Humboldt-Universität die Material- und Energieflüsse innerhalb dieses gesellschaftlichen Stoffwechsels mit dem Ziel, die Nutzung der Ressourcen nachhaltig zu gestalten."
A radically different approach to the use of land, energy and materials will be required if we are to build a more sustainable society, yet modern lifestyles often revolve around established patterns of resource use. The MAT_STOCKS project aims to build detailed databases of material stocks and services and gain new insights into patterns of resource use, as Helmut Haberl explains in EU Reseach, Winter 2019, p. 39)
