Socio-ecological regime transitions in Austria and the United Kingdom

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a v a i l a b l e a t w w w. s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m

w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n

ANALYSIS

Socio-ecological regime transitions in Austria and the United Kingdom Fridolin Krausmann a,⁎, Heinz Schandl b , Rolf Peter Sieferle c a

Institute of Social Ecology, Klagenfurt University, Austria CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra, Australia c Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland b

AR TIC LE I N FO

ABS TR ACT

Article history:

We employ the concepts of socio-ecological regime and regime transition to better

Received 13 April 2007

understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization. For two case

Received in revised form 10 May 2007

studies, the United Kingdom and Austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an

Accepted 1 June 2007

agrarian to an industrial socio-ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy

Available online 24 July 2007

use, land use and labour organization. In a first step, the coal based industrial regime coexisted with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime. In a

Keywords:

second step, the oil/electricity based industrial regime, agriculture was integrated into the

Socio-ecological regime

new pattern and the socio-ecological transition had been completed. Industrialization offers

Transition

an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime

Social metabolism

but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale. While today's industrial societies

Industrialization

are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global

Energy use

society are in midst of the old industrial transition. This poses severe problems for global

Land use

sustainability.

Labour

1.

© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Industrialization is an ongoing and global process. Starting from England in the 18th century it took place in most parts of Europe and the United States during the 19th Century and since has spread worldwide affecting every country and region, albeit, to a highly varying extent. In socio-economic terms it is a process characterized by large scale, machineassisted production of goods and services by a concentrated, usually urban labour force. The process is signified by technological change, spatial concentration and a declining economic significance of the agricultural sector. In this way, industrialization appears as a process of continuous increases in labour productivity and energy efficiency as well as growing

industrial output resulting in continuous economic growth. Besides impelling social change and creating material wealth it has fundamentally changed the human domination of the Earth's ecosystems and brought along a plethora of environmental problems (McNeill, 2000). A major claim of ecological economics is to broaden our understanding of economic processes and how they are embedded in nature by taking a biophysical perspective which conceptualizes economic processes also as natural processes in the sense that they can be seen as biological, physical and chemical processes (Ropke, 2005, see also Wackernagel, 1999). In this context, a historical understanding of the long term development of society–nature interactions is of vital importance (Martinez-Alier and Schandl, 2002; de Vries

⁎ Corresponding author. Institute of Social Ecology, Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070 Wien, Austria. Tel.: +43 1 5224000 412; fax: +43 1 5224000 477. E-mail address: [email protected] (F. Krausmann). URL: http://www.iff.ac.at/socec (F. Krausmann). 0921-8009/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.06.009

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and Goudsblom, 2002; Costanza et al., 2007; Martinez-Alier, 1987). We aim to complement the dominant socio-economic and socio-technical view on industrialization as a gradual process of continuous growth and technological change (Grübler, 1998; Maddison, 2001) by introducing a socio-ecological perspective focussing on changes in society–nature relations. We understand the industrialization process as a qualitative transition which transforms the agrarian socio-ecological regime into an industrial regime thereby establishing a distinct and fundamentally new pattern of society–nature interaction and material and energy use (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, 1997, 2007; de Vries and Goudsblom, 2002). Our analysis focuses on the changing relationship between the energy system, land use and human labour which allows for major upward shifts in the physical limits to growth (Martinez-Alier, 1987). We conceptualize industrialization as a stepwise process of decoupling the supply of energy from land related biomass and from human labour on the land. This has caused a shift in society's energy strategy away from tapping into flows of renewable energy towards the exploitation of large but nevertheless finite stocks of fossil energy. Even though this has allowed societies to overcome traditional limits to growth inherent in the agrarian socio-ecological regime, it has created new kinds of sustainability problems and environmental impacts associated with socio-economic activities. This paper draws on a database covering the long term historical development of biophysical society–nature interactions to explore changing relations of land use, material and energy flows, population and economic growth. We base our insights into the socio-ecological transition on two empirical case studies: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland (UK), the pioneer of industrialization, and Austria, often considered a typical European late comer in this process. We discuss the fundamental limitations on growth inherent in the agrarian socio-ecological regime. By adopting a comparative view on the two cases, we outline two phases in the transition from an agrarian to an industrial socioecological regime. We draw some conclusions about the universal character of this transition process and the implications this has for global sustainability.

2.

Methods and data

Time series data was compiled covering biophysical variables including land use, material and energy flows (i.e. domestic extraction, imports and exports) as well as socio-economic variables (GDP and population). National scale data is available in annual resolution for the period 1830 to 2000. For selected points in time the data base includes similar data for different spatial scales (rural regions and urban centres). The datasets employ standard methods for energy and material flow accounting (see Haberl, 2001; Schandl et al., 2002) and are thus based on a systemic approach. For the reconstruction of annual material and energy flows we used historical statistics and land surveys published for the UK and Austria since the early 19th Century. For stocks and flows not covered by statistics (e.g. grazed biomass, used crop residues) we

conducted modelling and estimation procedures. For a full description of the dataset see previous publications and reports (Krausmann et al., 2003a,b; Krausmann and Haberl, 2002, submitted for publication; Krausmann, 2001b; Schandl and Krausmann, 2007; Schandl and Schulz, 2002a,b). For an indepth discussion of the industrial transformation see Sieferle et al. (2006) and the global aspects of the metabolic transition Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl (2007). Empirical data presented in this paper largely refer to energy flows and land use. In accounting for socio-economic energy flows we use the accounting framework proposed by Haberl (2001) and extend the common notion of primary energy of standard energy statistics (e.g. OECD/IEA/Eurostat, 2005) by including all types of biomass appropriated by human society. In doing so, we broaden the scope for energy accounting from technical energy (fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear power and fuel wood) to biomass used to produce food for humans and feed for livestock and biomass for nonenergetic use.1 To take a broader view of primary energy is crucial for the analysis of energy flows in agrarian societies because biomass constitutes the primary source of energy not only for the provision of heat but also for human and animal work. All quantitative information on energy use refers to apparent consumption of primary energy (i.e. domestic energy consumption, DEC), calculated by adding-up domestic extraction and imports and subtracting exports. The accounts include all energy rich materials and other primary energy types, namely hydropower and nuclear heat. Unless otherwise noted, energy is reported in terms of gross calorific value (upper heating value). Data reported in statistics in mass were converted into calorific values by applying material specific conversion factors. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I resulted in major changes in the territorial boundaries of Austria. As this paper focuses on the relation of energy and land, these territorial changes impose major distortions. Therefore, data presented for Austria always refers to Austria as defined by its current boundaries (see Sieferle et al., 2006).

3.

The agrarian socio-ecological regime

We begin with a discussion of the biophysical characteristics of the agrarian socio-ecological regime. The basic feature of the agrarian regime is the controlled solar energy system (Sieferle et al., 2006). In this regime, provision of primary energy is almost exclusively based on land use. Biomass accounts for more than 95% of primary energy supply, while water and wind power, and in some cases also coal, only play a minor quantitative role. In general, these energy sources account for no more than a few percent of primary energy supply, although their economic importance may have been significant in certain areas. In the agrarian socio-ecological regime, agriculture is the core of the socio-economic energy system 1 The inclusion of non-energetic use of energy rich materials is consistent with the definition of primary energy in energy statistics, which considers e.g. petroleum products for nonenergy use as part of primary energy (OECD/IEA/Eurostat, 2005).

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and the main “energy providing” activity. To meet this function, an agrarian population invests labour to cultivate land and to produce primary energy for the nutrition of humans and draught animals, and for the provision of process and low temperature heat (Fig. 1a). A positive energy yield of agriculture is then the basic requirement for sustainability (Simmons, 1989).2 In the agrarian socio-ecological regime, the majority of the population lived on and from the land. But the land use system also fuelled a non-agricultural part of the overall social system, by providing food, feed, fuel and industrial material (fibres, leather, bones, potassium, dyestuff etc.) for the nonagricultural sector in urban centres (Fig. 1a). The availability of productive land in combination with land and labour productivity determined the overall availability of primary energy while the ability of agriculture to produce surplus determined the possible size of the non-agrarian population and production. Agrarian societies tap into renewable flows of energy, a potentially sustainable practice, a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustainability (see below). Agrarian regimes are by no means static. Via optimisation of land use and increases in the efficiency of biomass conversion societies which are biophysically based on a controlled solar energy system have the ability to grow (Boserup, 1965). Growth, in general, is population driven and results in absolute growth (more of the same) but is paid for by stable or rather declining per capita availability of primary energy (in combination with efficiency increases). Ultimately, however, growth in the agrarian regime is limited. Agriculture under pre-industrial conditions is a low input system. Soil fertility and long term stability of yields have to be maintained on the basis of locally available resources (e.g. labour, manure) and ecosystem services (e.g. natural regeneration rates), external inputs are not available. The local resource endowment in combination with a more or less complex system of labour organisation (mode of agricultural production) determines the productivity. This includes land use that is not uniform in spatial and temporal terms, the local combination of extractive and intensive land use types, transfers and recycling of nutrients (see Loomis and Connor, 1992; Netting, 1993; Cusso et al., 2005). According to natural conditions, population density and land use technology, a large variation of land use systems with differing capacity to provide energy and raw materials are possible (Boserup, 1965; Grigg, 1987). Increases in output usually go hand in hand with an increasing demand for labour, with the consequence that growth under pre-industrial conditions usually means declining per capita consumption of primary energy. An agrarian society featuring continuous growth inevitably approaches natural limits. The actual limits of physical growth are difficult to determine, but we can make some estimates of the energy potential of advanced European agricultural land use systems. From detailed case studies of local agricultural production systems we assume that pre-industrial land use systems in 2

In advanced Central European land use systems of the early 19th Century an energetic return upon investment (i.e., external energy inputs per unit of (food) energy output) of 5 or more has been estimated (see Leach, 1976; Stanhill, 1984; Cusso et al., 2005; Krausmann, 2004). That means, that per Joule of invested labour (measured in food equivalent) an energy output of 5 or more Joules of final energy (i.e. food) is achieved.

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Europe, usually rain fed cereal cultivation systems in combination with livestock in temperate climates, allow for a maximum annual energy yield of 30–40 GJ/ha.3 On a local level, assuming optimal soil and climatic conditions, significantly higher biomass yields may be achieved. However, this average takes into account large scale and long term averages of mixed land use systems under highly variable temporal and spatial conditions, i.e. the suitability for cultivation of land differs largely at the regional level and annual climatic variations result in a high variability of biomass yields. Based on an average annual per capita turnover of primary energy of 40–70 GJ4 and an energy yield of 30–40 GJ/ha a maximum population density of around 75 people per km2 (corresponding to an area requirement of 1.3 ha/cap) may be achieved.5 Energy availability also determines the size and structure of socio-economic material flows. We estimate, that overall material use in advanced agrarian societies typically amounts to 5–6 t/cap, biomass accounting for more than 80%.6 Exploiting renewable resources, the agrarian socio-ecological regime has a potential for sustainability. If sustainability problems do exist in agrarian societies, they are input related. Resource scarcity, often temporarily induced by adverse climatic conditions, and the overexploitation of renewable resources, which may lead to ecosystem degradation and scarcity related health problems, are the most pressing threats 3 This estimate of the energy potential of pre-industrial agriculture is based on the following assumptions which match well with land use patterns and biomass yields in 19th Century Europe: We assume that on a large scale 75% of the land area can be used for biomass production; of this area 50% allow for intensive cultivation (intensive cropland or grassland) at an average annual biomass yield of 80 GJ/ha (4–5 t dry matter), the rest is used more or less for resource extraction: 25% of the land remain woodlands with an average yield of 40 GJ/ha (4 scm of wood) and 25% are used as extensive pasture at a yield of 20 GJ/ha (1 t dry matter). This amounts to a maximum of 40 GJ per ha total area, equal to a biomass yield of roughly two to three tons dry matter per ha and year. This is much lower than the biological productivity of the natural vegetation in temperate climate which is around 180 GJ per ha and year (aboveground NPP): By interfering with ecosystem processes traditional land use technologies (with the exception of irrigation) reduce biological productivity but increase the output of biomass types of high socio-economic usability (Krausmann, 2001a). 4 Malanima (2002) and Simmons (1989) arrive at similar estimates. 5 This figure corresponds well with Esther Boserup's (1965) threshold of 65 persons per km2 (or 1.5 ha / capita) between highly intensive agrarian and urban–industrial systems. Under different climatic conditions, land use systems and patterns of biomass use (i.e. low significance of livestock and vegetable based diet) annual biomass turnover per person may be as low as 20 GJ. If we assume higher productivity under climate with a longer vegetation period this may allow for much larger population densities (up to 150). This is typical for rice based land use systems in south-east Asia and has been shown for e.g. for pre-industrial Japan (own estimates based on Japanese historical statistics) and the Philippines (Kastner, 2007). 6 Agrarian societies under temperate conditions (i.e. with rainfed cereal production and a high significance of livestock) use between 3 and 7 tons of biomass per capita and year. The most important fraction of non-renewable materials were sand, stones and bricks for construction which we estimate at 1 t/cap and year and some minerals of minor quantitative importance such as marl or ores (up to 0.2 t each). Based on Sieferle et al., 2006.

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Fig. 1 – The changing relation of energy, land and labour during the stages of the socio-ecological transition. Energy flows in (a) the agrarian socio-ecological regime, (b) the coal phase of industrialization, (c) the mature industrial socio-ecological regime. a) In the agrarian socio-ecological regime humans invest labour to cultivate land. By obtaining a net gain of useful energy, they can meet their own demands for food, feed and wood and that of an, albeit, small non-agricultural population and production system. The size of the (energy) surplus determines the size of the non-agricultural system. b) The exploitation of coal stocks allows for a massive growth of the non-agricultural system. Industrial production requires large amounts of human and animal labour and is linked to non-agricultural population growth. Agriculture receives hardly any inputs form the non-agricultural sector and the growing demand for food and feed is met by an optimisation of traditional low input agriculture (or in the case of the UK by food imports). c) Oil and electricity driven technology facilitate mass production and mass consumption. Trade both of biomass and fossil fuels gains importance. Production in agriculture and industry is increasingly decoupled from human labour and massive energy subsidies for agriculture allow for tremendous increase in agricultural output and labour productivity. In the new regime the relation between the agricultural and the non-agricultural production system is reversed. The non-agricultural system fuels agricultural production.

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(see e.g. Kjaergaard, 1994). Output related problems (pollution) are of minor and only local significance (Sieferle, 2003). Growth is possible within a certain range and has to be combined with optimisation of the land use systems and efficiency increases, otherwise agrarian social systems may collapse (Tainter, 1988; Costanza et al., 2007).

4.

The first wave of growth and transformation

The transition from an agrarian into an industrial socioecological regime is commonly regarded as having started in the UK and from there spread worldwide. As early as in the 17th Century, key features of the UK's agrarian socioecological regime began to transcend the typical pattern. Advances in land and labour productivity allowed increases in agricultural output and greater surplus and facilitated the growth of a non-agricultural urban population. Under the conditions of vast deforestation (the share of woodlands was reduced to 3% by 1800) and extreme scarcity of wood, coal was increasingly used. Coal provided an energy substitute for fuel wood essential for the concentrated energy demand needed to build-up and maintain urban infrastructures and to supply urban populations with heat. By 1700, the agricultural population in the UK was as low as 50% and the share of coal in primary energy supply around 15% (400 kg/cap). In the late 18th Century, the use of coal accelerated because of the diffusion of new technologies namely the steam engine and coal based iron production (Grübler, 1998; Smil, 1991). According to our estimate, in the early 19th Century energy use in the UK amounted to 60–70 GJ/cap/year. The share of coal in total energy supply was roughly 50%, and firewood was of minor significance (less than 5%). Agricultural biomass accounted for 45% of primary energy supply, see Fig. 2 and Table 1. Quite surprisingly, energy use per capita in Austria in 1830 was about the same level as in the UK. Contrary to the UK, however, coal was not of any quantitative importance (less than 1%), while firewood accounted for 50% and agricultural biomass similarly for 35 GJ/cap or 45% of primary energy supply.7 The differences in the energy system of Austria and

7 The similar level of per capita energy use in Austria and the United Kingdom is a product of a number of different factors: Above all, the territorial system boundaries play an important role: While the UK includes the less industrialized but densely populated Ireland, Austria refers to the territory of current Austria which at that time was the most advanced and heavily industrialized region within the Monarchy. In 1830, iron production in Austria amounted to 13 kg/cap as compared to 29 in the UK (Table 1) and consumed a large amount of firewood and charcoal. Setting the system boundaries differently, therefore, would yield another picture: Energy use per capita in Great Britain alone amounted to 90 GJ/cap compared to 40 GJ per capita in the Austrian (i.e. Cisleithanian) part of the monarchy or 66 GJ/cap on the current Austrian territory. In addition to these distortions caused by system boundaries, also consumption patterns may have some influence: Less favourable climatic conditions (cold winters with temperatures below 0) paired with high (local) availability of wood (0,4 ha of woodlands per capita in Austria vs. 0,02 ha/cap in the UK) result in a higher energy consumption for fuel wood especially in rural households (70–75% of total) in Austria.

Fig. 2 – Primary energy use per unit of land area in the United Kingdom and Austria, 1830–2000. Source: Krausmann and Haberl (2007), Schandl and Krausmann (2007), Sieferle et al. (2006).

the UK in the early 19th Century become even more evident if we compare energy use per unit of land area (Fig. 2, note the different scale of the two countries). In both economies the use of biomass amounted to roughly 30 GJ/ha and was, according to our estimate presented above, roughly at the limit of the renewable energy potential of the agrarian socio-ecological regime. In the UK, the use of coal almost doubled energy supply per unit of area to about 50 GJ/ha (or 60 GJ/ha in Great Britain) indicating that the UK had already surpassed the boundaries of the agrarian socio-ecological regime. From the 1820s onwards, the metabolic transition gained momentum in both countries, a process linked to the emergence and diffusion of the iron-steam engine–railroad complex.8 In the UK, by 1910, coal had reached a share of 80% of total energy supply and energy use per capita had doubled to 150 GJ; energy use per area had grown fourfold to 200 GJ/ha 8 For a discussion of technological issues see Grübler (1998) and Ayres (1990a,b); see also Ayres and van den Bergh (2005) for a discussion of the fossil fuel growth engine and its implications for physical growth.

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(Figs. 2 and 3). In Austria, too, the use of coal accelerated, but the development was less pronounced. After 1850, when the newly opened railroad lines connected Austria to coal mines in the northern provinces, coal consumption grew rapidly reaching 50% of energy supply by 1900 (Fig. 2). Coal was predominantly used as fuel for urban households and in certain industries. Due to the high availability of wood in rural areas, and the forest endowment of iron producing regions, wood continued to be an important primary energy source for the provision of heat well into the second half of the 19th Century. In Austria, energy use per capita increased by only 20% between 1830 and 1910, while energy use per hectare more than doubled and reached 70 GJ/ha (Table 1). The remarkable differences in per capita energy use between Austria and the UK at the beginning of the 20th Century can be largely explained by differences in the size of the industrial sector and

Table 1 – The United Kingdom (1a) and Austria (1b) in 1750, 1830, 1870, 1910, 1950 and 2000: selected variables 1750 1830 1a) United Kingdom Population [cap/km2] 34 76 density GDP/cap [intl $/cap] 1478 1779 Agricultural [% of total]54 28 population DEC/cap [GJ/cap/yr] 63 68 DEC/area [GJ/ha/yr] 19 52 Share of [% of total]81 54 biomass Coal [kg/cap/yr] 417 1100 consumption Iron/Steel [kg/cap/yr] n.D. 29 production Cereal yield [kg/ha/yr] 1200 2000 Motorization [vh/

1870 1910 1950 2000 99

143

210

247

3205 16

4611 8

6827 5

19,890 1

122 122 26

148 212 19

153 321 15

189 468 12

3175

4505

4101

921

194

226

327

198

1980

1980 2

2250 65

7500 438

53

79

83

97

1863 46

3290 36

3706 22

20,149 3

78 41 86

89 70 46

89 74 47

197 191 29

357

1612

1045

600

40

83

137

808

1250

1470 0

1550 13

6000 524

1000 cap]

1b) Austria Population [cap/km2] 32 42 density GDP/cap [intl $/cap] 1106 1378 Agricultural [% of total]n.D 75 population DEC/cap [GJ/cap/yr] n.D 73 DEC/area [GJ/ha/yr] n.D 31 Share of [% of total]n.D 99 biomass Coal [kg/cap/yr] n.D 8 consumption Iron/steel [kg/cap/yr] n.D 13 production Cereal yield [kg/ha/yr] n.D 910 Motorization [vh/

Fig. 3 – Primary energy use per capita in the United Kingdom and Austria, 1830–2000. Source: Krausmann and Haberl (2007), Schandl and Krausmann (2007), Sieferle et al. (2006).

reflect the dominant role of the UK in the world economy. Around 1910, for example, pig iron production in the UK had reached 226 kg/cap but only 80 kg/cap in Austria (Table 1). A large share of commodities produced in the UK were exported, contributing to a high domestic energy consumption. Sieferle (1982, 2001) has coined the term subterranean forest for the large stocks of fossilised biomass, the exploitation of which provided the energetic basis for physical growth during the industrial revolution (Fig. 1b). The shift to mining the subterranean forests instead of harvesting real woodlands was a first step in the decoupling of energy provision from the use of land and the consequent abolishment of the inherent limits to growth and the need for spatial differentiation of the land based energy system. The magnitude of this process was impressive and can best be illustrated by a simple calculation of the “size” of the subterranean forest that was exploited by 1900. The amount of coal burnt at the beginning of the 20th Century can be translated into a certain amount of firewood equal to coal supply in terms of its energy content. We express the firewood in terms of a hypothetical forest area, by applying an average value for sustainable wood yield.9 The size of the subterranean forest exploited by the UK exceeded the size of the country's actual territory in the 1850s and by 1900 an additional forest three times as large as the UK would have been required to meet the country's demand for heat. In Austria, this development was less pronounced, but even here the subterranean forest

1000 cap]

DEC—Primary energy use (domestic energy consumption); GDP—Gross domestic product in international Geary Khamis Dollars; vh/1000 cap—vehicles per 1000 inhabitants. Sources: own calculations based on Maddison (2001) (GDP); Mitchell (2003) (motorization, iron and steel); Sieferle et al. (2006) (DEC, Share of biomass, coal consumption, cereal yields).

9 We assume that 1 ha of woodland, on the basis of sustainable forestry, yielded about 5 solid cubic meters (scm) of wood per year. This is a rather optimistic assumption, average wood yields probably were closer to 3 scm/ha during the 19th Century. One scm of wood is equivalent to 0.5 t dry matter with an energy content of 10 GJ. One ton of coal with an energy content of 30 GJ is equivalent to 3 scm of fuel wood or 0.6 ha of woodland.

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Fig. 4 – The subterranean forest: Domestic consumption of fossil fuels in woodland equivalent (presented as percent of national territory). Source: Krausmann et al. (2003b) and Sieferle et al. (2006).

roughly reached the size of the actual territory in the early 20th Century (Fig. 4). The increase in energy availability achieved by large scale coal use clearly abolished a number of basic limitations for physical growth inherent in the agrarian socio-ecological regime. Firewood, an energy carrier of limited availability, low energy density and prohibitive transport costs could be replaced by an energy carrier with high energy density and available in large amounts. The new technologies of energy conversion and rail transport facilitated industrial production and allowed for spatial concentration and differentiation. Energy consumption grew tremendously. However, growth was still largely a matter of the industrial sector and the size of per capita energy use was determined by the size of energy intensive industries and the transportation network. The increase in energy availability due to coal hardly contributed to a growing energy availability in households and direct energy consumption by final users did not increase much. Our calculations have shown that the large scale use of coal contributed to a decoupling of energy provision from land use. However, coal did not allow for a complete decoupling, because major segments of the socio-economic energy system remained land based throughout the coal phase of the socioecological transition (Fig. 1b). Initially, coal helped to decouple the supply of space and process heat from the availability of woodlands and wood harvest. With the diffusion of the steam engine, coal could increasingly be used to provide mechanical power, thitherto confined to human and animal labour and to water or wind power. The steam engine was the basis for industrial production and rail transport, but it could only be employed for a limited number of mechanical processes requiring large amounts of power. Still, most of the downstream manufacturing processes of industry required large quantities of human labour. Every newly installed steam

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engine allowed for increases in industrial output, but, despite radical augmentations in labour productivity (Grübler, 1998), also increased the absolute demand for human labour. Similar effects have been observed for rail transport. The growing network of railroads drastically reduced costs of overland transport and boosted transport volume both in terms of goods and passengers. Nonetheless, with an average density of up to 100 m of railroads per km2 the railroad network was still a rather coarse web of lines and throughout the 19th Century transport to and from railroad stations required draught animals. Railroads, therefore, did not substitute for cart transport so with growing transport volume the need for draught animals also grew.10 Indeed, coal powered industrialization was systematically linked to a growing demand for human and animal labour and population growth and consequently contributed to a growing demand for food and feed which had to be met by agriculture (cf. Fig. 1b). Agriculture, in turn, hardly received any energy subsidies from the coal based industrial system, but, by and large, remained a low-input–low-output system within the tight biophysical constraints of the agrarian socio-ecological regime. The maintenance of soil fertility and stable yields were based on internal physical resources, regeneration rates and required a certain spatial organisation of land use11. Temporal and spatial land use rotations and the multifunctional use of livestock remained an integral part of the production system. The most essential confinement for increasing food output was the agricultural nutrient cycle. Despite growing deliveries of biomass (and essential plant nutrients) to urban–industrial centres, agricultural nutrient management had to rely on internal transfers, recycling and natural regeneration potentials. Population growth and an ever increasing demand for food and animal feed in combination with the persistence of agriculture within the confines of the agrarian socio-ecological regime emerged as a severe bottleneck for continued physical growth during the coal based period of industrialization.12 This

10 In Germany, the number of draught animals only began to decline during the first half of the 20th century (Sieferle, 1982). 11 Industrial tools made of iron and reduced transport costs for bulk material were among the few exceptions where agriculture physically profited from the coal based energy system. The employment of coal powered machinery and the application of mineral fertilizers such as Guano never gained large scale importance but remained restricted to specific niches and regions. According to Smil (2001), global nitrogen production in the form of guano and mineral nitrates reached 240.000 t by 1900. If we assume that 50% of this nitrogen was shipped to the UK and that another 50% were applied to cultivated soils this translates into merely 3 kg of nitrogen per ha of intensively used agricultural land (compared to 20–30 supplied by leguminous plants, see also Chorley (1981)). Doubtless, this was significant for some production niches in advanced economies, but it does not constitute an area wide solution, and not for all industrializing economies. 12 This argument only applies to the densely populated European countries, which did not have any new lands or frontier regions available for further colonization (except for their overseas colonies). The New World industrializing countries and also Russia were in a different situation and were able to expand agriculture into vast hinterlands with fertile soils.

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phenomenon was recognized and heavily debated throughout the 19th Century (Malthus, 1798; Ricardo, 1817; Liebig, 1865) and considerable efforts were taken to alleviate the problem. Among the most prominent solutions to raise agricultural yields were efforts to increase the return of essential plant nutrients from cities to agriculture (night soil recycling) and increasingly the exploitation of non-renewable nutrient stocks provided by Guano or Chile saltpetre (see footnote 11). As outlined above, the land use system under the conditions of the agrarian socio-ecological regime was far from static and the scope to optimise the land use system, to improve efficiency and to increase food and feed output was significant. In Austria, as in most other late industrializing economies, the capacity for traditional agricultural modernization to increase output was not fully exploited when industrialization accelerated. The Austrian agricultural production system of the early 19th Century was still largely based on the traditional three course rotation system, with 15% of the cropland fallowed every year and animals largely kept on pastures during the vegetation period. With a growing demand for agricultural produce, the potential for a further optimisation of the traditional land use system could be realized (Table 2). New crops, above all leguminous fodder crops, potatoes and corn were gradually included into new crop rotations and traditional fallow was abolished. The new crops raised the availability of fodder and allowed more livestock, improved feed supply and extended stall feeding. These measures improved the availability of manure and did, in combination with the nitrogen enriching effect of leguminous crops, significantly enhance the nutrient supply on cropland (Chorley, 1981). The shift to more labour intensive land use practices was largely compensated for by increasing employment of draught animals and more efficient iron tools. The optimisation of agricultural production allowed almost a doubling of food output in Austria between 1830 and 1910, although the agricultural labour force remained more or less constant during this period. That is, increases in output were directly contributing to growing surplus and were available for nonagricultural households. By and large, in Austria increases in food production kept pace with population growth during the 19th Century (cf. Table 2, Fig. 6b). The UK faced a dramatically different situation in the early 19th Century: with respect to the possibility for optimisation

Table 2 – Agricultural modernization in Austria 1830– 1910 1830 Livestock (livestock units, LSU) Draught animals Cropland Leguminous crops Fallow Nitrogen input Agricultural labour force Food output

[1000 LSU] 1440 [1000] [km2] [km2] [km2] [1000 t] [1000]

554 20,391 1086 3140 50 n.D.

[PJ]

13,6

Source: Sieferle et al. (2006).

1870

1890

1910

1970

2295

2650

661 19,395 1487 2030 61 1518

740 19,986 1783 1904 74 1519

733 20,206 2026 650 89 1340

17

21,4

24,3

of the land use system it had anticipated a process later followed by other industrializing nations. Much of the physical growth of the UK since the 16th century was based on agricultural improvements including institutional change, the enclosure movement, the introduction of new crop rotation and agricultural specialization (Overton, 1996). Early growth of the urban population was only possible due to sweeping changes in the institutional and technical organization of land use. By the mid-19th Century, however, it seems that the potential for further improvement of land use efficiency and yields was approaching its limits. This is difficult to prove directly, but it is indirectly evident in the development of crop yields: Between 1750 and 1830, UK cereal yields grew from 1.2 t per ha to around 2 t per ha (Table 1). Such high yield was twice the level found in Austria at that time and significantly higher than cereal yields in most other central European countries. In comparison, yields in Austria grew by more than 60% during the 19th Century and reached a level of 75% of the yields obtained in the UK by the early 20th Century (Table 1). Yields in the UK fluctuated around the high level reached by 1830/50 and did not increase further (even though agricultural adaptation continued and cropland was increasingly confined to land with optimum conditions for cereal cultivation). It seems highly plausible that by 1850 the UK agricultural system had reached the limits of agricultural modernization within the traditional solar based system. However, between 1830 and 1910 population density in the UK doubled from 76 to 143 persons per km2 (Table 1). As a result, the persistently growing demand for food and feed could not be met by the domestic agricultural system. Because of stagnating output and growing population, the domestic production of cereals declined from 6 GJ/cap in 1830 to less than 3 GJ/cap in 1910 (Fig. 5a). Net food output fell below 2 GJ/ cap far below the average physiological demand of at least 3.5 GJ/cap year. The only way out of the mismatch between agricultural production and home demand was to open international markets. In 1846, the corn laws were abolished and the political goal of self-sufficiency was abandoned. Based on its economic and political hegemony, the UK could rapidly decouple food and feed supply from domestic land availability. Food was imported in growing quantities, first from Prussia and Russia and since the development of iron sailing boats and later steam ships increasingly from the United States (see also Hornborg et al., 2007; Hornborg, 2006; Pomeranz, 2000). These regions were endowed with vast quantities of land and gradually expanded crop production into newly cultivated areas with fertile soils. Around 1890, British cereal imports surpassed the amount of domestic production and import dependency of staple foods grew to 60% (Fig. 5a). By 1900, the area equivalent of imported cereals reached a level similar to the domestically available cropland (Fig. 5b). Clearly, the large scale of imports had a significant impact on domestic agriculture and more and more cropland in the UK was taken out of production or converted into grassland; between 1870 and 1905 the amount of cropland in the UK shrank by 20% (Fig. 5b). The shift in food supply from home production to import in the UK has to be understood as an integral part of the decoupling of the energy system from — in this case domestic — land use. However, the British approach did not provide a path around the

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5.

Fig. 5 – a) Production and imports of food to the UK: b) Cropland and area equivalent of food imports to the UK. Source: own calculations based on Krausmann et al. (2003b) and Sieferle et al. (2006).

agricultural bottleneck for use by late comers and could not provide a means for persistent growth of global industrialization.13 The bottleneck of traditional agriculture was dissolved only in the next phase of the metabolic transition.

13

Additionally, the high food surplus of the New World agriculture was probably not sustainable in the long run. It has been shown that the newly cultivated lands in the US Mid West were gradually impoverishing and yields began to decline by the end of the 19th Century (Cunfer, 2005).

195

The second wave of growth after WWII

The coal phase of the socio-ecological transition was characterized by a coexistence of new and old socio-ecological patterns: urban industrial centres fuelled by coal and with a high domestic energy consumption, interconnected by a network of railroads embedded in a largely rural matrix that was only to a limited extent affected by the metabolic consequences of the coal based energy system. The rural area maintained many characteristics of the agrarian socioecological regime. At the end of the 19th Century the decoupling of energy provision and land use had progressed but it was not yet completed; above all, agriculture and animate power continued to be important elements of the socio-economic energy system. The first half of the 20th Century, the heavy engineering period of industrialization (Grübler, 1998), was characterised by economic and political instability. Energy use went up and down and fluctuated around a level of 140 GJ/cap in the UK and 80 GJ/cap in Austria (Fig. 3). In absolute terms, domestic energy supply continued to grow in both economies.14 Already in the first decades of the new century a new dynamic of growth emerged which fully prevailed only after World War II. The decades after the war were characterized by the establishment of a new pattern of energy use, very distinct in terms of structure and level from the coal phase of industrialization. The period from 1950 to 1973 showed a rapid rise in per capita energy use which grew by 123% in Austria and 54% in the UK to a reach a level of around 200 GJ/ capita in both economies (Fig. 3). At the same time coal was displaced by oil and later natural gas (see Fig. 2); both are energy carriers with an even higher energy density and easy to transport once a network of pipelines is established. By the early 1970s, the use of coal in the UK had declined by 40% compared to the pre-war years. Currently only 28 GJ of coal per capita are used in the UK and 17 GJ/cap in Austria, most of it in electricity plants and the iron industry. A shift from coal to new energy carriers and the diffusion of a bundle of technological innovations, namely the petroleum– steel–auto cluster combined with electricity (Ayres, 1990a,b; Grübler, 1998), characterized the next phase of the socioecological transition. This phase started in the 1930s in the US and arrived in Europe only after World War II. Steam engines were quickly replaced as prime movers by internal combustion engines and electric motors, and electricity greatly enhanced the flexibility of energy use. These new technologies did not appear as deus ex machina. They were developed and available much earlier but only adopted after the War in Europe. A main driving force for this development was the decline of relative energy prices (Pfister, 2003; Smil, 2003) and it was enhanced by massive efforts by the state: including 14 The actual dynamics of physical development and energy use and role of different influential factors during this period are difficult to assess and would require a more detailed analysis: The slow down of growth might be attributed to the distortions caused by the two World Wars and the economic crisis, or to saturation effects of a maturing coal based energy system superimposed by the emergence of a new phase of the socioecological transformation (Grübler, 1998; Ayres, 1990a,b).

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infrastructure projects such as road construction programmes, area-wide electrification and the implementation of the “green plan” to industrialize agriculture (Grübler, 1998). The increasingly narrow woven web of transport infrastructure (from 100 m/km2 for railroads to 1000–2000 m/km2 for roads) was of particular importance for the area-wide penetration of the new regime and resulted in a surge of transport volume in terms of both persons and goods. Mass production and declining energy prices turned pre-war luxury goods, such as the automobile or many electrical appliances, into household “necessities”, leading to mass consumption. In contrast to earlier periods, this phase was characterized by massive increases in direct energy consumption by final consumers due to the implementation of energy consuming technologies such as central heating, electrical household appliances and the use of the automobile in practically all households. Transport and households currently each account for roughly 30% of total technical final energy use in both countries, while the share of industry decreased from 50 to 25% (IEA, 2004). This period of mass production and mass consumption (Grübler, 1998) was made possible by large scale institutional change including contra-cyclical investment and unemployment payments by the state and a significant rise in the share of wages in overall GDP allowing for stabilizing domestic demand (Lutz, 1984). This permitted a change in the basic economic orientation of households where austerity was replaced by consumerism, a phenomenon termed 1950s Syndrome by the environmental historian Pfister (2003). This new institutional set-up and the according resource use patterns mark the next phase of the socio-ecological transformation characterized by a steep increase in per capita energy use in Austria and in the UK between 1950 and the mid1970s (Fig. 3), above all caused by transport and household consumption. In addition to the shift in energy carriers and a surge in per capita energy use two processes were responsible for the completion of the transition of the socio-ecological regime: the industrialization of agriculture and the decoupling of production from animate power. The industrialization of agriculture further contributed to the decoupling of land use and energy provision. Finally, the above mentioned technologies allowed for large scale energy subsidies for agricultural production. Mechanisation and agrochemicals made possible a tremendous increase in area and labour productivity in agriculture and the traditional limits to growth no longer existed (Grigg, 1992). Table 3 and Fig. 6 illustrate this process for Austrian agriculture.15 Mechanisation eliminated animal power and largely substituted human labour. Between 1950 and 1980 draught animals disappeared and up to 25% of the agricultural area required to provide feed for animals became disposable for food production or other purposes. In the same period, human labour in agriculture was reduced by 75% while the installed power per unit of land increased by a factor 20 due to the increased use of agricultural machinery. Chemical fertilizers, above all nitrogen fertilizer, now synthesized in large quantities by the Haber–Bosch process 15 Due to restrictions in space we discuss the process industrialization of agriculture only for the Austrian case. The changes in UK agriculture were of a similar nature. (see e.g. Sieferle et al., 2006; Grigg, 1992).

Fig. 6 – Agricultural modernization in Austria: a) Nitrogen input from leguminous crops and artificial fertilizer; b) Population and food production in person equivalents. The sharp decline in fertilizer input (a) since the early 1980s is related to sweeping changes in Austrian agricultural policy (incl. the introduction of a fertilizer tax) and the subsidy system which aimed at reducing overproduction and resulted in structural changes in Austrian agriculture. b) Food production (measured in GJ nutritive value) was converted into person equivalents assuming an average annual food demand of 4.5 GJ per person. The gross value takes into account the output of all edible plant based biomass. Net food output is considerably smaller (in particular since the 1930s), because a large share of edible biomass is used to feed livestock and converted into animal based food. Source: Krausmann (2004), Sieferle et al. (2006).

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Table 3 – The industrialization of Austrian agriculture 1935–2000 1935 1960 1980 2000 Tractors Draught animals Fertilizer Agricultural labour force Cereal yield Food output

[1000] [1000] [kg/ha] [1000] [kg/ha] [PJ]

1 590 8 1269 1630 34

147 206 67 776 2357 46

335 30 140 290 4339 78

336 0 85 150 5721 75

Source: Sieferle et al. (2006).

resolved the nutrient limitation inherent to the traditional agrarian regime. Nitrogen input facilitated by nitrogen fixation of leguminous crops, once a key technology of agricultural modernization in the 19th Century, reached its peak in Austria in the 1950s at 30,000 tons but within only a few years was replaced by nitrogen inputs from artificial fertilizer. These artificial fertilizer inputs grew to 160,000 tons by 1980 (Fig. 6a). In combination with other agrochemicals, breeding and modern transport technologies the mode of agricultural production changed fundamentally. The regionally optimised low input land use systems based on the integration of crop production and animal husbandry were replaced by specialized high input farming systems allowing for a high degree of spatial differentiation. This new type of industrialized high input agriculture permitted tremendous increases in area yields and agricultural output (Table 3). As a consequence of these agricultural innovations, food output of agriculture grew faster than population. For Austria, this is shown in Fig. 6b. In 1950, edible plant biomass produced by Austrian agriculture was enough to feed 6 million people but would have maintained more than 18 million people in the 1980s. However, actual net food output is much lower than edible plant biomass and is sufficient to nourish 12 million people. This indicates, that increasingly edible biomass (above all cereals) was fed to livestock and converted into animal products. In essence, the increases in area and labour productivity were accomplished by massive fossil fuel based energy subsidies into agriculture in terms of fuel, electricity or large energy requirements for the production of agro-chemicals (Pimentel et al., 1991; Leach, 1976). These innovations fundamentally changed the role of agriculture within the socio-economic energy system. The increase in output was achieved by a declining energy efficiency of agricultural production and in the strict sense, agriculture turned from an energy providing activity into a sink for useful energy. The energy return upon energy investment of Austrian agriculture declined from an input–output ratio of 1 to 9 in the early 20th century to a ratio of 1 to 0.8 in the 1970s (Krausmann et al., 2003a,b). Additionally, the industrialization of agriculture was related to a range of environmental pressures including large scale soil degradation, ground water pollution or habitat destruction (Mannion, 1995; Tello et al., 2006). Another process to be highlighted in this context is the decoupling of production from animate power: The substitution of the steam engine by the electrical and the internal combustion engine allowed for far-reaching mechanisation of labour intensive processes also in agriculture. In contrast to earlier periods of industrialization labour and time saving technologies in combination with structural changes in

197

industrial labour organisation facilitated an absolute delinking of production and animate power. What has been shown for the agricultural sector is also true for the whole economy. Draught animals rapidly were replaced by motor vehicles since the 1930s and had virtually disappeared by the 1970s. But human labour, too, became increasingly substituted by machines and the demand for industrial workers declined while production continued to grow. In the three decades between 1950 and 1980 the agricultural labour force declined by 55% in the UK and 75% in Austria (Table 3). Since the 1960s, the number of workers in the primary and secondary industrial sectors has declined by roughly 50% in the UK and 43% in Austria (Mitchell, 2003). The disconnection of production from human labour was a necessary pre-condition for the emerging service economy and for enabling mass consumption (cf. Ausubel and Grübler, 1995). Counterintuitively, this phase of the socio-ecological transition transforming the industrial society into what is often called a service economy or post-industrial society did not lead to dematerialization (i.e. a declining use of materials and energy). It was systematically linked to an increase in per capita energy and material consumption (Figs. 2 and 3) and the integration of all parts of the economy into the industrial metabolism.16 With the industrialization of agriculture and the replacement of animate power in production this phase has made possible the ultimate de-linking of energy provision and land use. But if we consider the non-substitutability of biomass based food (Ayres, 2007) this process of de-linking seems largely exhausted and unlikely to go much further. Ultimately, the period of rapid growth of energy consumption after World War II came to a halt in the 1970s (see Fig. 3). Since then, per capita energy use has fluctuated around 200 GJ in both the UK and Austria and growth per unit of area has significantly slowed down.17 This deceleration of growth in energy consumption coincided with the so called energy crises or oil price shocks (Hohensee, 1996) of the 1970s and 1980s. A series of sharp (but temporary) increases in the price of crude oil, induced by political conflicts in the oil producing countries in the Near East caused drastic declines in energy use and economic growth rates (see Smil, 2003). It has also been argued, that the stabilization of per capita turnover of energy was related to a maturation of major growth industries such as the automobile industry (Grübler, 1998), and the steep decline of domestic energy use in the UK in the early 1980s is partly an effect of systematic deindustrialization during the Thatcher era. Additionally, a number of factors may have contributed to the obvious slowdown of physical growth, visible not only in energy turnover but also in the use of materials. The oil price shocks created a sensibility in industrialized countries for the farreaching dependency on imported fossil fuels and fluctuations in oil price. This encouraged new technologies and efficiency

16 In a similar way, the industrial revolution only reduced the economic but not the biophysical significance of agriculture. Industrialization increased the overall intensity of land use and the size of socio-economic biomass flows increased. 17 Contrary to the similarities in energy use per capita in Austria and the UK, the differences in energy use per unit of area are large (Fig. 2). The higher DEC per unit of area in the UK is due to the higher population density.

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Table 4 – Socio-metabolic profiles of the agrarian and industrial socio-ecological regime and country groups for the year 2000

Population Population density GDP/cap Agricultural population DEC/cap DMC/cap DEC/area DMC/area Share of biomass in DEC Coal consumption Iron production/use Cereal yield Motorization

[mio] [cap/km2] [intl $/cap] [% of total] [GJ/cap/yr] [t/cap yr] [GJ/ha/yr] [t/cap/yr] [% of total] [kg/cap/yr] [kg/cap/yr] [kg/ha/yr] [cars/1000 cap]

Agrarian

Industrial

– b 40 b 1000 N 80 40–70 3–6 b 30 b2 N 95 b 100 b5 b 2000

– b 400 N 15,000 b 10 150–400 15–25 b 600 b 50 10–30

3–6000 300–1000

LD

DC

NIC/TM

IC

683 32 992 69 37 4 12 1 93 3 2 1346 5

2233 77 2593 46 49 6 38 5 57 143 35 2040 22

2189 29 4913 47 95 10 41 4 37 672 145 2782 51

940 43 24,527 5 294 21 85 6 21 1603 462 4002 575

DEC—Primary energy use (domestic energy consumption); DMC—Domestic material consumption; GDP—Gross domestic product in international Geary Khamis Dollars; Agrarian: typical values for advanced European agrarian socio-ecological regime. Population density and, hence, the level of material and energy use per unit of area in agrarian societies based on labour intensive horticultural production with low significance of livestock can reach twice that level (see text); Industrial: Typical values for advanced industrial economies. In countries with high population densities per capita values of DMC and DEC tend to be at the lower range, while per area values are high. In countries with low population densities per area values can be very low; LD—least developed countries; DC—developing countries; NIC and TM—newly industrialized countries and transition economies; IC—industrialized countries (classification according to United Nations). Source: Global metabolic transition database (Krausmann et al., 2007).

gains allowing growth in demand for energy services at a stabilized input of primary energy. On the other hand, this has contributed to the discovery and exploitation of new domestic energy resources such as oil in the North Sea.18 At the same time, globalisation has brought about the externalisation of energy and material intensive industries from industrialized countries to countries of the South, a process which may contribute to a reduction of energy use in industrial economies such as Austria and the UK (Muradian et al., 2002). More recently, the growing awareness of impacts of fossil fuel consumption on global climate change has resulted in political efforts to reduce energy use by the realization of potential efficiency gains and recycling and shift from fossil fuels towards carbon neutral energy sources including biomass, hydropower, wind energy and nuclear. Still, an absolute decline in energy use is not in sight. Energy and material use continues to grow both in Austria and the UK such as is the case in most other industrialized countries (Weisz et al., 2006; Haberl et al., 2006).

6.

The industrial socio-ecological regime

During industrialization and in particular during the period of mass production and mass consumption following World War II the economic latecomer Austria caught up with the UK in both economic and socio-metabolic terms and, with respect to some key indicators such as steel production or motorization, it even surpassed the UK. By and large, the history of industrialization in the two countries has led to remarkably similar energy systems both in structure and relative size and a convergence of the metabolic profile of the two economies (Table 1). 18

Since 1973, the UK has increased the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas and has developed into a major oil producing country. In combination with the use of nuclear power this has reduced its import dependency by 60%. In Austria the expansion of hydropower and intensified use of biomass had similar effects.

The comparative analysis shows that the socio-ecological (or metabolic) transition was characterized by a stepwise process of decoupling energy provision from land use. The final step in this transition was the industrialization of agriculture which inverted the role of land use within the socio-economic energy system. While in the agrarian regime agriculture was the main energy providing activity and supplied not only the agricultural population, but also non-agricultural population and production with energy, industrialized agriculture was fuelled by massive energy inputs from the non-agricultural production system and turned into a net sink of socio-economically useful energy (Leach, 1976; Martinez-Alier, 1987). The decoupling of energy provision from land use removed basic limits for biophysical growth inherent to agrarian societies. Instead of tapping into renewable but comparatively small flows of energy with a low density, under the industrial regime large stocks of energy are exploited, allowing mobilization of huge amounts of energy and materials in a short time. The new energy basis of the economy led to unprecedented economic, but also physical growth. Growth under the conditions of the agrarian regime was population driven and in general led to a decline in energy use per capita. Industrial growth, in contrast, is based on both population growth and a surge in per capita use of natural resources. Table 4 shows typical metabolic profiles for advanced European agrarian and industrial regimes and identifies the physical dimensions of the socio-ecological transition. While the agrarian regime typically allows for a population density of 30–40 persons per km2, the industrial socioecological regime can support several hundred persons per km2. The level of per capita use of material and energy in densely populated industrial societies is by a factor 3–5 larger than under agrarian conditions.19 This results in an aggregate growth of material and energy use per unit of area by a factor 10–30. 19

It has been shown that per capita material and energy use in low density industrialized countries in general is by a factor 2 larger than in high density countries (Haberl et al., 2006; Weisz et al., 2006).

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The high level of per capita use of energy and material resources is inherent in the current industrial socio-ecological regime and related to the material and energy intensive industrial production systems (incl. agriculture); the installation, operation and maintenance of large infrastructures (e.g. buildings, roads) and physical stocks (e.g. cars), the high level of mobility of goods and people in a spatially highly differentiated economy and a high material standard of living (including central heating/air conditioning, electrical household appliances, dietary patterns and tourism). Energy use per unit of area in densely populated industrial societies is as high as 600 GJ/ha and far beyond the potential of a land based energy system, although modern land use systems achieve higher biomass yields. Despite the far-reaching substitution of fossil fuels for biomass, both with respect to energy generation but also the production of fibres and other raw materials, biomass remains an important material in the metabolism of industrial societies (Weisz et al., 2006). In Austria and the UK consumption of biomass has more than doubled during industrialization (Fig. 3) and the level of biomass use per capita has hardly decreased. The socio-ecological transition also implies a shift in sustainability problems (Sieferle, 2003). The agrarian socio-ecological regime, making use of renewable energy flows, is based on a land use system that allows for stable yields and thus has the potential for long-lasting sustainability. However, sustainability is not guaranteed and numerous cases of collapse and failure have occurred in the long history of the agrarian socio-ecological regime (Tainter, 1988; Diamond, 2005). The major challenge for sustainability was related to scarce inputs and the overexploitation of natural resources, while output related environmental problems were mostly of only local importance. Long-lasting growth imposed a severe threat to the sustainability of agrarian societies and led to socio-ecological transition or decline. Innovations were possible but hard to achieve and every innovation drove the system closer to its biophysical boundaries making the innovation less likely. Thus, per-capita growth in the agrarian socio-ecological regime hardly occurred. In contrast, industrial societies solved the sustainability problem of their predecessors. They are characterized by (temporary) abundance of energy and materials, while output-related environmental impacts, habitat loss and social inequality impose a major threat to sustainability. From the smoke stack intensive coal/steam period with its smog incidents, via acid deposition and water pollution to anthropogenic carbon emissions and their impact on the global climate, problems have changed over time, some have been solved technically, while others continue to worsen. In the long run, however, input related sustainability issues apparently will become important, because the industrial socio-ecological regime is built on the exploitation of finite stocks of energy carriers and materials and possibilities for substitution are limited (Ayres, 2007). The socio-ecological transition is a global phenomenon and gradually has affected the whole world. However, only a small number of countries went through the full process of regime transition such as the UK and Austria. Globally around 1 billion people or around 20% of the population live in countries that show the characteristics of the advanced industrial socioecological regime (Table 4). These countries produce more than 80% of the global GDP, account for 25% of the global land

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area and consume 38% of the global primary energy and 37% of the material supply. Roughly 0.6 billion people in economically least developed countries live in a situation close to that of the historical agrarian socio-ecological regime, i.e. low per capita energy and material use and low shares of fossil fuels and a small urban/industrial population (Table 4). The majority of the world population (roughly two thirds) live in economies in different stages of the above described transition process. Some of them, the newly industrializing countries (including China, India, Brazil and Russia and other formerly planned economies) are obviously following an industrialization path which in a biophysical way resembles the historical path of the industrial core. Although the specific patterns and the speed of development differ under the conditions of a global economy and modern technologies (Eisenmenger et al., 2007), industrialization continues to involve energy, material and labour intensive processes, growing material stocks and the large scale use of fossil fuels — at early stages predominantly coal — as has been the case in the historical regime transition. Taking a biophysical view it becomes evident, that it will not be possible to accomplish global industrialization without an alternative pathway for the metabolic transition. Scarcity of oil and gas will increasingly become an issue and declining energy prices, a major precondition for the industrialization of the industrial core, are unlikely to prevail for latecomers. Before energy scarcity and rising energy prices become a major problem, the world is faced with rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contributing to global warming and destabilization of the world climatic system to a large and unknown extent. Thus the path taken by the Western industrial nations may not be the paragon of economic development for the rest of the world. Its sustainability-limits may become sensible at an earlier stage than has been expected regarding fossil energy resources. A world wide adjustment of material and energy use to the level of current industrialized nations would imply increasing environmental pressures. In particular, densely populated regions in East and Southeast Asia, already experiencing high levels of material and energy turnover per area despite low per capita supply, will face increasing environmental constraints. In the light of the historical process, the need for a new, sustainable, industrial socio-ecological regime with lower per capita material and energy turnover and a lower share of non-renewable energy and materials becomes a vital need for the global system.

Acknowledgments The paper was first presented at the 9th biennial Conference on Ecological Economics in New Delhi in 2006. The authors are grateful to Marina Fischer–Kowalski for the many fruitful discussions on the subjects of our paper. We are also thankful to Clive L. Spash and Graham Turner and two anonymous reviewers for their comments to a draft version and to KarlHeinz Erb for support with graphics. The paper is based on research conducted in the project The Transformation of Society's Natural Relations, coordinated by Marina Fischer–Kowalski and funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF (project P-16759 G04).

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