Journal of Industrial Ecology

Call for Papers:

Special Issue on

Material Use Across World Regions: 
Inevitable Pasts and Possible Futures

Deadline: April 15, 2007

The Journal of Industrial Ecology invites you to submit articles for a special issue on Material Use Across World Regions: Inevitable Pasts and Possible Futures by April 15, 2007. Helga Weisz of Klagenfurt University, Austria and Heinz Schandl of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia will jointly serve as editors of the special issue. 
 
One of the most important reasons for unsustainable development is the huge amounts and the specific quality of materials used by contemporary industrial production and consumption systems. Analyzing this social metabolism at different levels and finding ways to reorient it towards more sustainable paths in the future has been a major topic in industrial ecology since its beginning. 
 
Recently, with the G8 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle) initiative, Japan’s plan to become a “Sound Material Cycle Society”, and the European Commission’s “Strategy towards a sustainable use of natural resources”, the use of materials has been become a key issue in sustainability policies internationally. For nearly two decades, materials flow analysis (MFA) has been used and further developed as a tool to study social metabolism to understand the relations between social well-being, economic growth, environmental damage and the use of materials.

Suggested Topics for the Special Issue

The goal of this special issue is to examine the existing knowledge about economy- wide material use in industrial and developing countries in different parts of the world and its relation to sustainability. Appropriate topics include:

  • Economy-wide MFA (EW-MFA) methodology - interpretation and discussion of indicators, uncertainty analysis, comparative analysis, software tools and further developments, problems of aggregation,
  • Description and interpretation of material use patterns of world regions (such as the United States, South America, the European Union, Eastern European transition economies, China, India, Japan, South-East Asia, and Australia) with regard to sustainability,
  • Long term studies of the historical socio-metabolic transition from agrarian to industrial modes of production,
  • Analysis of the relation between material use and land use, waste generation, energy use, and environmental degradation, ecological terms of trade, and standard of living,
  • Options and obstacles for dematerialization, 
  • Case studies on specific materials or uses on a global scale (e.g. metals, housing etc.), 
  • Scenarios for future materials use, and
  • Studies which analyse the relations between material stocks and flows.
To ensure both coherence and a sufficient diversity we ask for papers to comply with the state of the art methodology of materials flow accounting,[1] to integrate at least a minimum of economic analysis, to explicitly deal with political issues related to resource use and sustainability and to focus on the interpretation of results rather than being merely descriptive. Methods used might include analytical statistics, input-output analysis, scenario analysis, time series analysis, dynamic modelling, and stock and flow models. 
Ancillary data relevant to articles can be posted on the journal's web site in the form of e-supplements.

Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology is an emerging field that examines local, regional, and global uses and flows of materials and energy in products, processes, industrial sectors and economies. It focuses on the potential role of industry in reducing environmental burdens throughout the product life cycle and encompasses:
 

  • material and energy flow studies ("industrial metabolism"),
  • dematerialization and decarbonization,
  • technological change and the environment,
  • life-cycle planning, design and assessment,
  • design for the environment,
  • extended producer responsibility ("product stewardship"),
  • eco-industrial parks ("industrial symbiosis"),
  • product-oriented environmental policy, and
  • eco-efficiency.
How to Submit
Manuscripts should be original, previously unpublished, in English, and between 3,500 and 6,500 words in length. Submission implies that the manuscript has not been submitted for publication elsewhere and that it will not be submitted elsewhere while the review process is underway. Papers should be submitted electronically (as email file attachments) to <indecol@yale.edu>. There are no special formatting requirements at this stage in the process, but please use a well known file type (MS Word, WordPerfect, PDF, RTF) and put all text, tables and figures into one file. More details about the preparation of the manuscript can be obtained from the Editor or from the Journal's web page <www.mitpressjournals.org/jie>.

 
 
 

Send inquiries and submissions to:

Reid Lifset
Editor, Journal of Industrial Ecology
Yale University
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
205 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT, 06511-2189  USA
indecol@yale.edu
www.mitpressjournals.org/jie



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

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Last Updated by N. Gordon, October 23, 2006