Videos
Resources, Conservation and Recycling Webinar
Mapping material stocks of buildings and infrastructure around the world
Guest Speakers: Dominik WIEDENHOFER (Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria)
Moderator: Mitchell JONES (Outreach Editor, Resources, Conservation and Recycling)
Understanding the size and spatial distribution of socio-economic material stocks is important to inform strategies aimed at more sustainable resource management, a circular economy, as well as climate change mitigation. Over the last two decades, research on mapping material stocks has made major progress, which I will shortly give an overview about. Then I will introduce recent remote sensing based, big data efforts yielding high-resolution mappings of buildings and mobility infrastructure around the world. I will finalize with reflections about the state-of-the-art and important next steps.
Zersiedelung in Österreich 1975 bis 2020
Brenner, A.-K., Krüger, T., Haberl, H., Stöglehner, G., Behnisch, M., 2024. Rapider Anstieg der Zersiedelung in Österreich von 1975 bis 2020. Eine räumlich explizite Analyse unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wohnbevölkerung, Social Ecology Working Paper No. 178. Vienna.
In Österreich sind Ziele wie „die Zersiedlung zu reduzieren bzw. zu stoppen“ (BMK 2023, 147) und die „Unterbindung von Zersiedlung“ (ÖROK 2023, 23) seit Jahren verstärkt Inhalt politischer Ausverhandlungsprozesse. Aktuell ist der Beschluss einer rechtlich bindenden österreichischen Bodenstrategie, die im Entwurf vorliegt, gescheitert, weil keine Einigung über die geplante Festlegung einer Obergrenze für den Flächenverbrauch auf 2,5ha pro Tag erzielt werden konnte [Quelle: oerok.gv.at (letzte Abfrage: 27. Mai 2024)].
Neben der Frage, wieviel Fläche verbaut und damit versiegelt wird, ist die räumliche Anordnung von Siedlungen, also ob Gebäude im Raum kompakt oder zerstreut angeordnet sind, von zentraler Bedeutung. Diesen Aspekt beschreibt die Zersiedlung: Als Zersiedlung bezeichnet man die räumliche Ausbreitung von Siedlungen in die Landschaft außerhalb kompakter Siedlungsstrukturen und in geringer Dichte, insbesondere in Form von freistehenden Einfamilienhäusern und großflächigen Gewerbegebieten und Einkaufszentren. Zersiedelung verursacht einen besonders hohen Flächenverbrauch pro Person und ist eine besonders ressourcenintensive Form der Bebauung. Die Ausbreitung von Gebäuden in der Landschaft bei geringer Nutzungsdichte fördert die Abhänigkeit vom Auto. Entsprechend hoch ist systembedingt der Bedarf an Straßen und Parkplätzen und das Verkehrsaufkommen. Der steigende Flächenverbrauch für den Verkehr und die Mobilität mit dem Auto wirken sich negativ auf die Treihausgasemissionen aus, zu deren Reduktion sich Österreich verpflichtet hat. Gleichzeitig steigen die Kosten für die Infrastrukturentwicklung und -instandhaltung in den zersiedelten Gebieten. Der Ausbau des ÖVPN wird durch Zersiedelung erschwert, ebenso der Ausbau klimafreundlicher Heizungen, etwa in Form von Fernwärmenetzen. Zusätzlich führt Zersiedlung zu besonders großen Verlusten fruchtbarer Böden, Fragmentierung von Landschaften und negativen Folgen für die Biodiversität. Zudem verstärkt Zersiedlung soziale Segregation und erschwert dementsprechend die soziale Inklusion.
Social Ecology Lecture: Creating Circularity for Critical Raw Materials
Presentation: Christoph Helbig
Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are materials with high supply risks and high vulnerability to supply restrictions. Demand for CRMs is expected to grow drastically over the next decades because they are essential for clean and renewable energy, digitalization, and defense. Therefore, large efforts worldwide in politics and industry are undertaken to secure the increasing demand for CRMs, such as the European Critical Raw Materials Act. Increased production rates bear the risk of additional environmental impacts contributing to the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. These environmental impacts can be mitigated partially if the demand is fulfilled with anthropogenic resources. However, CRMs have low circularity rates and high loss rates in the economy. The average lifetime of 30 metals in the periodic table is 10 years or even shorter because products, waste management, and recycling systems are not optimized for keeping Critical Raw Materials in the loop. To change this, we need a vision for a circularity and sustainability transition that includes all aspects of the Circular Economy: low-carbon production technologies, resource-light business models, effective regulations supporting circularity, and selective and efficient recycling processes.
Presentation (ppt)
How heavy is the USA?
Forum #12: Energy-hungry societies and a future in flux: insights from social metabolism
INDIKATOREN erklärt von Helmut Haberl
Helmut Haberl (BOKU Wien) beschreibt in diesem Video, wie sich mithilfe von Indikatoren als Messgrößen komplexe Dinge besser erklären und verstehen lassen.
NEGATIVE EMISSIONEN erklärt von Helmut Haberl
Helmut Haberl (BOKU Wien) erklärt den Begriff "Negative Emissionen". Dabei handelt es sich um Maßnahmen, mit denen Treibhausgase aus der Atmosphäre wieder entfernt werden. Neben Direct Air Capture gibt es unter anderem auch BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage)* als Option zum Erzielen von negativen Emissionen.
BECCS erklärt von Helmut Haberl
Helmut Haberl (BOKU Wien) spricht in diesem Video über den Begriff "BECCS", welcher für Bio Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage und auf Deutsch Bioenergie mit Kohlenstoffabscheidung und Kohlenstofflagerung. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Option zum Erzielen von Negativen Emissionen.
1,5 Grad Ziel/Limit
Helmut Haberl (BOKU Wien) spricht in diesem Video über das "1,5 Grad-Ziel/Limit" und erklärt, welche Rolle Österreich in diesem globalen Pfad einnimmt.
Économie: des flux monétaires aux flux matériels, avec Helmut Haberl, Richard York et Joshua Farley
Growth in GDP, Extraction and Pollution in the Global Economy
64th episode of the Circular Metabolism Podcast: Growth in GDP, Extraction and Pollution in the Global Economy with Dr. Dominik Wiedenhofer
On today’s episode we try to explore the relationship between on the one hand our resource and pollution flows with their associated infrastructure and on the other hand the service that they provide to society. In fact, when thinking about the future, we often ask ourselves how can meet the needs of our societies while reducing the flows needed to operate them.
Antrittsvorlesungen: Daniel Ennöckl und Helmut Haberl
Begrüßung und einleitende Worte:
Univ.Prof.in MMag.a Dr.in Eva Schulev-Steindl, LL.M.
Rektorin der Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Antrittsvorlesungen:
„Last chance to see – Wie das Recht die Artenvielfalt schützt“
Univ.Prof. Mag. Dr. Daniel Ennöckl, LL.M.
Institut für Rechtswissenschaften
„Kreislaufwirtschaft und Thermodynamik: aktuelle Herausforderungen“
Univ.Prof. Mag. Dr. Helmut Haberl
Institut für Soziale Ökologie
Moderation der Veranstaltung:
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Erwin Schmid
Leiter des Departments für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
DIGITAL & CIRCULAR: KREISLAUFGESELLSCHAFT LERNEN UND LEBEN
MAK FUTURE LAB live aus dem MAK
Am Podium:
Verena Fuchsberger-Staufer (Universität Salzburg)
Martin Grödl (Process – Studio for Art and Design)
Helmut Haberl (BOKU Wien) Lotte Kristoferitsch (EOOS NEXT)
Christian Schienerl (Schienerl Design / Art Direction)
Michael Strugl (Verbund)
Moderation: Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (MAK)
Das hochkarätige Panel diskutiert u. a. folgende Fragen: Welche vorrangigen systemischen Änderungen braucht es für die Kreislaufgesellschaft? In welchen Bereichen wäre die Kreislaufwirtschaft besonders wichtig? Wie können wir Kreislaufgesellschaft im Alltag leben und wie sollten Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstellen gestaltet sein, um digitale Innovationskraft optimal dafür zu nützen?
Im Rahmen der Ausstellung DIGITAL & CIRCULAR im MAK - mehr Info unter https://mak.at/digitalandcircular
Presentations at the 14th Biennial International Conference on EcoBalance
The 14th Biennial International Conference on EcoBalance is hosted by the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan. The theme of the conference is “Materializing Sustainability Visions: Fostering Partnerships with Life Cycle Thinking” and due to COVID-19 restrictions, it happens as a hybrid-online conference.
Talk by Jan Streeck: Socio-economic material stocks and their role in reducing resource use in the United States of America
Socio-economic material stocks of infrastructure, buildings and machinery are the basis of production and consumption and an important determinant of current and future resource use. One of the largest consumers of materials worldwide are the United States of America (USA) with a substantial influence on global trends. To assess the role of stocks for long-term resource use in this affluent industrialized economy, we here present results of a study on economy-wide resource use, accumulation of material stocks and resulting end-of-life outflows from 1870 to 2017. Based on the dynamics of stocks and resulting end-of-life (EoL) outflows from stocks, we investigate waste management and circularity considerations and present two prospective scenarios until 2100 to highlight the long-term effect of material stock dynamics for future resource use.
Talk by Doris Virág MA MSc: “The materiality of mobility. A case study for the city of Vienna, Austria”
Urban material stocks of mobility infrastructure and vehicles require substantial amounts of materials and energy for maintenance and operation in order to provide mobility services, thereby causing considerable emissions. We investigate resource demand and emissions linked to personal mobility in Vienna and compare a number of stock-flow-service indicators for four different mobility modes. Policy measures planned by the City of Vienna are discussed in relation to the findings.
Talk by Dr. Dominik Wiedenhofer: “A novel approach for mapping material stocks of buildings and infrastructure from remote-sensing data”
Spatial patterns of buildings and infrastructures play an important role in determining societies’ resource use patterns and are hence under scrutiny when pondering strategies to foster sustainability. Currently, two types of data are used to map building and infrastructure stocks: (1) night-time lights and (2) cadastral data, which both have important limitations. We here present results of an alternative approach that derives high-resolution material stock maps from a stock-driven modelling using freely available Earth Observation data derived from newest generation European Sentinel satellites, combined with information from OpenStreetMap and material intensity factors per m2 respectively m3 of infrastructures and buildings.
circular strategies. Towards a Sustainable Built Environment
SESSION 3 / Large Scale: Reuse of Urban Areas, Design of Urban Areas for Reuse
00:00 Introduction
00:49 The Role of Material Stock Patterns for Societies’ Resource Use ... – Helmut Haberl
23:19 Masterplanning the Adaptive City - Sergio Porta
43:26 The City Territory as a Renewable Resource - Paola Viganò
01:08:17 Panel discussion
The Role of Material Stock Patterns for Societies’ Resource Use and Well-Being
Helmut Haberl, Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Masterplanning the Adaptive City
Sergio Porta, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
The City Territory as a Renewable Resource
Paola Viganò, Milano/Brussels, EPFL Lausanne and IUAV Venice
Panel discussion with Andrea Börner (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Helmut Haberl, Sergio Porta, and Paola Viganò
Moderated by Wojciech Czaja, author and journalist, Vienna
Erklärfilm MAT_STOCKS - Der soziale Metabolismus
Virtuelles Mediengespräch: Wie weiter nach Corona: Wirtschaftswachstum und Klimaziele?
Inputs:
Dr. Dominik Wiedenhofer (BOKU): Klima- und Umweltkrise trotz Wirtschaftswachstum bewältigen? Was sagt die wissenschaftliche Evidenz?
Dr.in Melanie Pichler (BOKU): Politik muss Maßnahmen zur absoluten Reduktion von CO2-Emissionen setzen
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Daniel Hausknost (WU Wien): Klimaschutz nicht den Märkten überlassen – Politik muss Entscheidungen treffen
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Helmut Haberl (BOKU): Empfehlungen für ambitionierte Wirtschafts- & Klimapolitik in Österreich und Europa
Die Corona-Krise hatte zwar kurzfristig massive Auswirkungen auf Wirtschaft und Umwelt, jedoch steigen Ressourcen-Verbrauch und Emissionen inzwischen wieder rapide an. In der Post-Corona Politik wird sich daher entscheiden, ob auch Klima- und Umweltkrise bewältigt werden können. Wissenschaftler*innen an der Universität für Bodenkultur und der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien haben gemeinsam mit einem internationalen Team nun eine Meta-Analyse durchgeführt: darin wird der aktuelle Stand der Forschung zum Zusammenhang von Wirtschaftswachstum (BIP), Ressourcenverbrauch (Rohstoffe und Energie) und Treibhausgasemissionen analysiert und bewertet. Klar ist: Mit einer „weiter-wie-bisher“-Strategie können Ressourcenverbrauch und Emissionen weder ausreichend schnell noch so stark wie nötig reduziert werden. Vier der Wissenschaflter*innen berichten nun in diesem Mediengespräch die gesammelten Einsichten dieser Studien für Österreich und geben Empfehlungen ab.
Weitere Informationen: https://bit.ly/3mpwFhS
Spaceship Earth's Odyssey to a circular Economy
While many governments officially strive for the circular economy, our global material and energy flows increase and global circularity decreases since 1900. If the circular economy is to be taken seriously, a radical shift in our societal metabolism is required.
More information in the article.
The Marshall Plan. A turning point in European Environmental History?
Helsinki University Humanities Programme
Helsinki Environmental Humanities Forum
December 3, 2019 (Tuesday), at 14.15- 15.45
Robert Groß, Innsbruck University, Austria
The Marshall Plan. A turning point in European Environmental History?
Abstract
The European Recovery Program (ERP), also known as Marshall Plan has been studied over decades from perspectives of economic-, social- and cultural history, or as a program that emphasized the shift in U.S.-foreign policies and catalyzed the Cold War. However, scholars overlooked one aspect of the Marshall Plan so far, that is the biophysical impact the program had on the environment. In my paper I propose three different starting points for such a research. Firstly, taking stock of models provided by earth system science, we can observe that the post-WWII shift in human-nature relations that has been described as the “Great Acceleration” took off in parallel to the massive shipping of raw materials, fuel, machinery and technical expertise worth US $ 13 billion into 16 war-damaged European nations. Secondly, the outlet of the Marshall Plan forced European nations to organize themselves in novel transnational institutions e.g. OEEC and UNECE, whose aim was not only to coordinate the reconstruction of war-damaged provisioning systems but also the transformation of mobility and energy infrastructure according to the U.S. model of a “fossil democracy”. The latter translated, thirdly, into production practices by obliging receiving governments to install a system of counterpart-funds providing incentives for efficiency increases in industries that either produced exportable consumer goods, or extracted exportable resources including energy.Considering these three levels, I suggest that a socio-ecological or environmental historian reading of the Marshall Plan might provide a useful lens that enables the study of changing resource use patterns, production practices and so on, which literally ‘made’ the “Great Acceleration” in Europe after 1947.
Social metabolism and land-system science | 313R | GLP OSM 2019
The 4th Open Science Meeting of the Global Land Programme was held from April 24-26 in Bern, Switzerland
Session Organizers: Helmut Haberl, Fridolin Krausmann, Felix Creutzig, Patrick Hostert, and Christoph Görg 0:00 | Helmut Haberl: Introductory talk to the session on social metabolism and land-system science 15:40 | Christoph Görg: The stock-flow-service nexus: Implications for sustainability transformations and future land systems 35:38 | Franz Schug: Wall-to-wall material stock mapping – from satellite data to material stock modeling 55:22 | Fritz Wittmann: Modelling dietary scenarios for a sustainable food provision system of Vienna 1:12:45 | Sohail Ahmad & Felix Creutzig: Influence of gasoline price on urban sprawl: Evidence from global cities Interrelations between socioecological flows of energy or materials and land systems have been on the agenda of land-system science for at least two decades. Obvious examples are biomass-based products such as food or bioenergy, as well as land-use intensity indicators such as the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP), which assess socioeconomic and ecological flows of biomass or nutrients. Other aspects of social metabolism, e.g. the use of minerals or metals and their accumulation in long-lived material stocks (e.g., in buildings or infrastructures) have received less attention, perhaps due to their relatively minor direct land area demand. New socio-metabolic research suggests that the accumulation of material stocks is of key importance. The fraction of all materials used worldwide to build up stocks has grown from ⁓20% to above 50% in the last century. Stocks create legacies and lock-in effects, as infrastructures enable or incentivize certain, often resource-intensive behaviors. Large flows of energy and materials are required for maintaining and using stocks. Transforming social metabolism towards more sustainable patterns of resource use will require far-reaching changes in society’s material stock patterns. A focus on material stocks holds great promise for land-system science because stocks are characterized by their location and spatial patterns, both of which are important in terms of their impacts, and in terms of their resource requirements. For example, transport energy demand strongly depends on the spatial patterns of settlements and workspaces, and the transport infrastructures through which they are linked. This session will explore the links between material stocks, biophysical flows of materials and energy, and the services specific stock-flow combinations deliver to society. It will discuss their potential to forge new approaches in land-system science, e.g. through high-resolution mapping of material stocks, and cast new perspectives on long-standing discourses such as urban-hinterland relations or the role of infrastructure development for land-system change. Moreover, possible pathways towards more sustainable stock-flow-service relations and their implications for land systems will be in focus.
More info at https://www.glp.earth