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User:Seniorexpat/Material Flow Analysis

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Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is an academic discipline that combines insights from economics with engineering to portray in measurable form the movement of natural resources into, through and out of a system, many of which are thought to have impacts on the environment in connection with sustainability or sustainable development.

Development of the discipline

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  • Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek is considered by many to be the father of the discipline with his concept of Material Input Per Service unit (MIPS). Dr. Schmidt-Bleek is known for his work claiming that resource efficiency could be increased by a Factor 10. He inspired others in Germany in the Eighties of the last century to pursue studies in MFA with him at the Wuppertal Institute in Germany, and some of them to set up institutes of their own. One such institute, the Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI) in Vienna, Austria (with a related institution in Germany), has developed a data base called materialflows.net.
  • Dennis Meadows gave the discipline it biggest boost when he co-authored the bestseller Limits to Growth in 1971.

Meadows et al. based their predictions on an analysis of Resource stocks; see in the Glossary [1].

  • Mathis Wackernagel is known for co-developing the concept of the ecological footprint. Dr. Wackernagel founded the Footprint Network.
  • The UNEP Resource Panel was set up in 2008 by the United Nations Environment Program, and is headed by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker. Somewhat like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change it brings together experts on the subject to issue common statements. Dr. von Weizsaecker is known for his book Factor 4 coauthored with Amory Lovins and Mrs. Hunter Lovins.

Critique

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  • The factors are ambitious by which resource efficiency is said to be improvable.
  • Emissions such as carbon dioxide which have been proven elsewhere to have special earth-warming effects as greenhouse gases are treated in much the same ways as any other resource.
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Starting in 2009 a semi-annual international conference is held in Davos, Switzerland, on Material Flow Analysis and sustainable development, which is called the World Resources Forum. Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, Dennis Meadows, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker of the UNEP Resource Panel and Dr. Wackernagel all participate.

References

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  • See also Resource flow and Resource stock in the Glossary

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