Emergy: a currency for achieving sustainability and fairness in times of descent? Daniel A. Bergquist, PhD/researcher Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD Uppsala) Villavägen 16, SE Uppsala, Sweden

Some points of departure Many approaches to development promote exponential economic growth and consumption, supported by increasing throughput of energy Improved energy efficiency often fails to decrease the global consumption average, as efficiency gains are reinvested in new consumption The global resource base does not grow following the same exponential trend Natural resources are stock or flow limited and follow cyclical patterns

Points of departure, cont. Ultimately all economic processes depend on energy, and hence oscillations in the resource base It is a general misconception among many scientists and policy makers that society can grow into a sustainable steady state Growing skepticism towards the feasibility of continued expansion of the global capitalist system sustained by essentially finite sources of energy

The pulsing paradigm Long periods of gradual production and storing of reserves, followed by short but intensive periods of consumption Alternation between consumption and re-growth Good policy for human activity is to fit the timing of environmental oscillations – reorganize society accordingly e.g. strategies for de-growth

Implications for global trade Seldom recognised that all economic activities ultimately depend on natural resources Trade is based on ways of establishing value that underestimate the contribution by people and the environment Inherent weaknesses in contemporary systems of exchange, but also in concepts such as sustainable development (i.e. steady state conceptualisations)

The paradox of sustainable development Sustainability implies levelling off global use of energy and resources (i.e. de-growth) Development implies continued expansion of production and consumption (i.e. growth) The question is, therefore, from where a society that prioritises growth is to draw its resources?

A challenge for De-growth alternatives As long as conventional ways for exchange continue to underestimate the environmental and human support to production, the unfeasibility of economic growth may not be visualised, and can hence even less be understood or corrected Calls for new approaches that acknowledge resource limits, and emphasise energy use and fairness in trade and development

Possible solutions For the De-growth argument to gain support, it is necessary first to quantify and visualise the claimed unsustainable and unfair patterns of trade Analyse trade from a systems perspective Emphasise resource flows between natural and human systems, and the North and South Articulate unfair global trade and energy efficiency

Emergy Emergy = Energy memory, or embodied energy Theoretical concept and methodology that accounts for environmental and human support to economic processes on equal terms, by accounting for all inputs and processes and converting them into one similar currency; solar emergy joules A means to illuminate social and economic unfairness, sustainability of production and consumption, by focusing on flows within and between systems, and the degree to which production systems are dependent on local versus external, renewable and non-renewable resources Offers guidance in re-designing economic systems to benefit humans as well as nature A systems approach with possibilities for merging systems theory in physical and social sciences

Growth (in the North) is driven by unequal storages of power (p1,2) and control mechanisms that accumulate wealth via global trade Result: degraded negotiation power (p2) and non-renewable environmental storages (N) Unequal terms of trade work as a feedback mechanism that reinforces the North’s ability to appropriate even more resources The pulsing paradigm suggests that growth may continue only as long as there are storages of natural resources left to exploit (N) It is increasingly probable that the current system enters a period of decomposition, or collapse

Emergy evaluations of production and trade Scientifically and empirically based critique to growth and trade by comparing emergy in products and money Emergy in product = the amount of emergy supporting the generation of a particular commodity or resource Emdollar = the amount of emergy supporting the generation of one unit of a currency When analysing the emergy support to production, and comparing it to the emergy support to the generation of money paid in exchange, it is possible to determine who is favoured in trade

One example – trade with cultured shrimp (Sri Lanka and Sweden) Underestimation of environmental and local human support to production processes, combined with unequal power relations between the North and South, results in a market price that enables a net emergy benefit to the buyer Emergy accumulation in the North

The potential of the emergy perspective for redesigning society for sustainability, fairness and de-growth  Quantify and visualise unfair transactions  Acknowledge and study human and environmental support simultaneously  More holistic product certification systems, e.g. “fair-trade”  Guidance for re-designing the current global trade system to benefit all humans as well as nature

 Counteract unfairness and decrease energy use on aggregate levels, by analysing trade from a global systems perspective  Balance resource flows between producers and consumers  Avoid a situation where efficiency gains are invested in new consumption  Shift agricultural and material intensive activities back to rural areas in the North where farming was abandoned centuries ago  Introduce energy efficient agriculture and food production in other less exploited areas, e.g. in urban and peri-urban environments Challenges and opportunities

 Diversify agricultural production  Make more use of local renewable resources in food production and consumption systems, as opposed to fossil fuels, e.g. for petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, tools and transportation  Separate local subsistence (food) markets and global trade of luxury commodities, i.e., introduce bi-centric economic systems  Prioritize essential needs instead of materialistic wants Decreased energy need and consumption on aggregate levels A world characterized by sustainability, fairness and de-growth

Thank You!