Environmental Management Systems – 2.

Environmental Trends
and the Economic Framework

Ádám CSUVÁR

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 Content

1. Linear economy and the problems of it

• Value creation
• Ecological footprint
• IPAT, eco-efficiency, rebound effect
2. Environmental trends
• Biodiversity
• Waste
• Water
• Soil
• Air

Note: The content of the presentation is based on the book of Csutora, M. & Kerekes, S. (2004) titled The Environmental
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Friendly Tools of Corporate Management and on the slideshows of Zilahy, Gy. of Environmental Management Systems.
1. Linear economy and the problems of it
Environmental Trends and the Economic Framework

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Source: Engelman, 2013

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 What are the most
serious environmental
problems on
a global scale?

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Source: Steffen et al. 2015
 Graev: If the business world is so strong and doing so
much good: why is there so much trouble with the world?

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Value-creating company

• Meets the needs with a small increase in

entropy
• High entropy growth = waste of natural
goods
• Aim: higher value with less harmful effect =
ECO-EFFICIENCY (EE = S/MI)
• S = value of the service provided
• MI = material input
• Reciprocal: material intensity per unit of
service: MIPS = MI/S
• How to measure?
• Life cycle analysis (LCA), ecological
footprint 7
Ecological footprint

• What is the annual renewable capacity of

the biosphere in hectares, land or sea
surface?
• How big is the area required to reproduce
the resource needs of a given population
each year, considering prevalent
technologies and resource management?
• Footprint calculator:
www.footprintcalculator.org

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Wealthy, advanced, educated, modern, democratic
countries as the greenest ones?

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 Wealth
=
environmental
destruction?

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My results

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Methodology for calculating the ecological footprint

• From the elements of resource consumption and waste generation of the

population:
• What do we consume and how much?
• Life cycle analysis to reveal the environmental consequences of consumption
(resource use, pollution assimilation capacity)
• Use of aggregated data
• Aggregate methodology based on aggregated data of national statistics
→ the environmental effects of the components of consumption are known
• E.g. the environmental impact of all types of paper (packaging, newspaper,
typewriter): sufficient to examine the combined environmental consequences
related to the consumption and production of one kilogram of statistical paper

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Look at the regional sustainability
of the environmental pillar!
• Measure unit: global hectare (gha): a hectare with a productivity equal to the
average productivity of the total bioproductive hectare of the Earth
1. Biocapacity: the size of fertile areas available in a country in global hectares;
supply of environmental goods, services
• Biocapacity (gha) = area (ha) * equivalent factor (gha / ha) * yield factor
2. Ecological footprint: demand of environmental goods, services
3. Balance of the two „sides”:
If ecological footprint > biocapacity → ecological deficit, overrun 
• Biocapacity "importers": countries with high population density (e.g. the
Netherlands) or natural handicaps (e.g. Ethiopia)
• Biocapacity "exporters": Brazil, Canada, Russia

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 • 1971.12.20.
• 1981.11.11
• 1989.10.12.
• 1995.10.05.
• 2004.09.01.
Source: Earth Overshoot Day, 2019

• 2009.08.19.
• 2014.08.05.
• 2018.08.01.

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The environmental burden per unit
of GDP needs to be decimated…
• … but people want to consume more - justified in many regions!
• IPAT → I (mpact) = P (opulation) * A (ffluence) * T (technology)
• P and A will grow → Eyeing with the technology…
• Lovins Natural Capitalism: environmental impact of GDP can be strongly reduced
thanks to
1. changes in the structure of the economy (intellectual activity, services)
2. advances in science and technology

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Structural changes of GDP – What’s behind of this?
Source: Wikipedia, 2021

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Changes in the carbonintensity of the economy
(CO2 emissions kg per PPP $ of GDP)

Source: WorldBank, 2021 Source: WorldBank, 2021

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 Can we solve the (global) environmental problems using
only technological improvements?

Source: France-Presse, 2021 Source: Richter, 2021 19

Jevons paradox and the rebound effect

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2. Environmental trends
Environmental Trends and the Economic Framework

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Dangerous trends in resources

• Technical progress is blurring the boundaries (copper scarcity → economical

utility of low metal ores → copper excess)
• The depletion of traditionally exhaustible resources has slowed down
• Renewable resources' renewable capacity is threatened (forests,
biodiversity)
• UN, 1995: 2-25% of tropical rainforest species may disappear in the next quarter
century, 1,000 to 10,000 times more than natural extinction
• Ceballos et al., 2017:
• Almost one third of the 27,600 terrestrial mammals, birds, amphibians and
reptiles studied, both in number and in area is decreasing
• Between 1900 and 2015, each of the 177 mammal species more closely
analyzed lost at least 30 percent of their natural habitat
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Drivers of biodiversity loss

• Habitat destruction and fragmentation

• Overexploitation
• Pollution
• Invasive species

• Agricultural biodiversity is also declining

(more „uniform” crop and lifestock varieties
→ increased vulnerability)

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Importance of biodiversty for us

• Providing basic functions (carbon and water cycle, soil

protection, climate control)
• Aesthetic, scientific, cultural function – not monetarised
• Sources of many products (food, textiles, medicine)
• Information base (biomimicry, biotechnology)
• Source of recreation and (eco) tourism

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The question of system boundaries

• What do we consider
input/product/waste?
• Only technological, economic
question?
• Example: chemical plants
• Waste: if not enough, recovery is
uneconomical
• (By-)product: if enough and
technology is installed for
processing
• (Theoretical) goal: no waste, circularity
– as nature
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Waste

Communal Industrial
• Scattered • Concentrated
• Heterogenous • Homogenous
• Theoretically more difficult to • Theoretically easier to recycle
recycle

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Money = Trash? Or is there a Kuznets curve?

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The waste „hierarchy” (4R strategy)

1. Reduce
• Less packaging
• Products requiring less raw materials
• Products with longer life and better repairability
• Less consumption
2. Reuse (in an unchanged form)
3. Recycle (the material)
4. Recover (burn the waste, utilise energy)
• Controversial issue
• Least favourable option: landfilling

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Source: Dormido, 2019

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Long term air pollutants

• Residential time > 1 year

• Not dangerous gases: the rise
in concentration causes the
problem
• Long term, global problems
• Examples:
• Greenhouse gases (carbon
dioxide, nitrous oxide,
methane etc.)
• Chlorofluorocarbon, CFC
(freon etc.)

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Short term air pollutants

• Residential time < 1 year

• Dangerous gases, solid matters
• Short term, local problems
• Examples:
• Sulfur dioxide
• Nitrogen oxides
• Groundlevel ozone
• Airborne dust (particulate matters, PM)

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Health effects of particulate matters

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What to do?

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Recommended materials

• R. York: Ecological Paradoxes: William Stanley Jevons and the Paperless Office
• Earth from Space: Gotland Baltic blooms – YouTube
• WAD | World Atlas of Desertification (europa.eu)

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