On Chinas endosomatic and exosomatic metabolism: An application of analysis of societal metabolism Yating Li, Yan Zhang*, Sheng-sheng Li, Naijin Yang State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Stimulation, School of Environment Beijing Normal University Beijing, China * Corresponding author: E-mail: zhangyanyxy126.com AbstractThe “metabolism of human society” is a concept used to characterize the processes of energy and material transformation in a society which are necessary for its continued existence. In order to improve the traditional input-output analysis method and the black-box analysis model, the societal metabolic ecosystem of china was divided into different components to establish societal metabolic ecosystem model to analyze metabolic processes and account the eco-flows between components, and determine the hierarchy relationship between the various components. Two indexes (the contribution index and the development pressure index) were put forward to analyze the metabolism of china. This paper could be the scientific basis for the sustainable development. Keywords-China; endosomatic and exosomatic metabolism; societal metabolic ecosystem; metabolic processes; the contribution index and the development pressure index I. INTRODUCTION The development of human economy is at the expense of great destruction of ecological environment and resource consumption, bringing great obstacle to the sustainable development of the society. In the final analysis, the root of the problem is the metabolic disorder of societal economic ecosystem. Therefore many scholars tried to study the inconsistency problems between human society and ecological environment from the standpoint of metabolism. The theory of societal metabolism originated from biological metabolism1-3, in the beginning, people made qualitative research4-8 on the theory of societal metabolism, then many specialists put emphasis on how to make quantitative analysis9-14 in order to study the interaction between human activities and the natural environment. In the present study, Energy Flow Analysis (EFA) and Material Flow Analysis (MFA) are the main methods for the study of metabolism. EFA can make various eco-flows of the societal metabolic ecosystem in an integrated manner 15-31, however, the transformation factors can not be available, especially the ones of the materials exchanged within the system, this makes it hard to account. MFA is a traditional accounting method of metabolism 32-40, which can not account different quality of materials and products. However, it can be used to analyze materials transferring pathway and intensity to avoid the subjectivity of transforming the environmental resources into the monetary flows. For this reason, MFA is an effective accounting method for this paper. At the present time, societal metabolic research based on the input-output analysis is still in the black-box analysis stage. However, the key issue of metabolic research is how to deeply analyze the metabolic processes from input to output and dissect intrinsic interaction mechanism. Therefore, in this paper, based on the theory of the societal metabolism and the method of MFA, we analyze the components and metabolic processes of the societal metabolic ecosystem by establishing the model of the societal metabolic ecosystem, checking the flows of input and output of each component to improve the traditional method of MFA, understand their underlying relations, and finding out the reasons and the solutions of societal metabolic disorder. The research provides a new way to objectively evaluate the state of the societal metabolic ecosystem and can be the theoretical basis of societal sustainable development for china. II. METHODOLOGY AND DATA USED A. Analysis of the societal metabolic ecosystem The societal metabolic ecosystem includes both the metabolic main entity-the societal economic system and the internal environment. Here, we consider the internal environment to be the natural regions within the national administrative boundaries. The focus is endosomatic metabolism between the metabolic main entity and the internal environment. The openness and dependence of the system mean that the national metabolic activities cannot be supported solely by the limited country space, but require support from the external environment, which includes all the regions beyond the national administrative boundaries, so exosomatic metabolism between the societal metabolic ecosystem and the external environment is also included. B. Model establishment of the societal metabolic ecosystem We have divided the societal metabolic ecosystem into eight components: 1-the internal environment, 2-the agricultural sector, 3-the mining sector, 4-the manufacturing sector, 5-the building sector, 6-the domestic sector (i.e., domestic life of the national citizens), 7-the possessing recycling sector and 8-the external environment, shown in Fig.1, to determine the eco-flows throughout the system and define the components metabolic roles. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation ofChina (No. 40701004), the Ph.D. Program Foundation of Ministry ofEducation of China (No. 20070027033), and the National Basic ResearchProgram of China (973 Program, Grant No.2005CB724204). 978-1-4244-4713-8/10/$25.00 2010 IEEE Figure 1. Model of the ecological flows in the societal metabolic ecosystem Note: f21: Renewable resources, agricultural hidden flows41 and oxygen to be consumed by livestocks; f31: Nonrenewable materials (estimated by mining quantity and mining hidden flows); f41: Oxygen consumed by fuels42; f61: Oxygen consumed by people42; f12: Agricultural indirect flows(estimated by agricultural losses, contaminants(fertilizer, agricultural chemical and agricultural plastics) and the quantity of the emitted gasses and agricultural hidden flows); f42: Agricultural processes goods; f62: Agricultural products consumed directly by people and agricultural energy; f82: Output of agricultural products and agricultural import hidden flows; f13: Mining hidden flows and Mining wastes(without treatment); f43: Mining quantity; f73:Mining waste; f83: Output of mining products and mining import hidden flows; f14: The quantity of the emitted gasses by combustion42 and wastes(without treatment); f24: Production materials, equipments and energy consumption; f34: The mining equipments and energy consumption; f54: Building materials and energy consumption; f64: Food, living goods and energy consumption; f74: Industrial waste and energy consumption; f84: Output of industrial products(including the building materials) and import hidden flows; f15: Building wastes; f16: The quantity of the emitted gasses42 and living gaseous wastes(due to the lack of data, assuming no recycling of domestic pollutants, and industrial gaseous wastes full recovery); f76: Domestic wastes(the pollutants in domestic sewage and garbage); f86: Domestic import hidden flows; f17: Discharge of pollutants after treatment; f47: Recycling of industry pollutants; f28: Import of agricultural means of production(fertilizer, agricultural chemical and so on) and agricultural import hidden flows; f38: Import of mining products and mining import hidden flows; f48: Import of industry products (including the wood, livestocks, the building materials and so on) and import hidden flows; f68: Import of food and living goods and domestic import hidden flows(due to the limitation of data, imported raw materials and products, except for agricultural means of production and minerals, enter the manufacturing sector to be advanced production, and the other products which can be directly consumed by people enter the domestic sector). C. Evaluation method of societal metabolism Based on the analysis of the societal metabolic ecosystems components, similar to the flow direction of food chain from producers to decomposers, the flow direction of eco-flows in the societal metabolic ecosystem can be affirmed. However, the roles of components of the societal metabolic ecosystem are chanceful, making the function of components of the societal metabolic ecosystem complicated, therefore, two indexes (the contribution index and the development pressure index) were put forward to analyze the hierarchy relationship and metabolism: the contribution index is the ratio of the effective output and total input and the development pressure index is the ratio of the amount of pollutants released into the environment and the total input. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A. The results of accounting According to MFA, we can get various eco-flows of the societal metabolic ecosystem, shown in Table. B. Analysis and Discussion After calculating the eco-flows of each component, we can focus on the analysis of the roles of various components in the societal metabolic ecosystem. The components were ranked from producer to decomposer by the metabolic processes, and two indexes (the contribution index and development pressure index) were put forward to evaluate the function of each component. 1) The hierarchy relationship pyramid analysis: On the basis of the food chain (web) of nutrition level in the natural ecological system, the producers, consumers and decomposers of societal metabolic ecosystem can be defined. In the societal metabolic ecosystem, the producer is the environment that supports the metabolic main entity to survive, the consumer is the societal economic system, and the decomposer is the sectors that deal with treatment and recovery of pollutants. The industrial system takes the dominated place in the societal metabolic ecosystem, whose producers, consumers and decomposers can be further divided. The producers of the industrial system are the sectors that use the environmental resources to produce the primary products (such as the agricultural sector and the mining sector); The consumers are the sectors that use these primary products to produce the advanced products; for example, the manufacturing sector is both the senior producer in the societal metabolic ecosystem and the consumer in the industrial system. Because of the limit of the accounting method, the tertiary industries are not considered. The decomposers are the same sectors as mentioned above. TABLE THE ACCOUNTING RESULT OF THE ECO-FLOWS IN THE SOCIETAL METABOLIC ECOSYSTEMa (Unit:t) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 0 4.46E+09 4.56E+13 8.04E+09 8.45E+08 8.60E+08 5.03E+07 0 2 4.77E+09 0 0 1.56E+08 0 0 0 5.71E+07 3 4.75E+13 0 0 1.35E+08 0 0 0 2.75E+09 4 6.12E+09 1.61E+08 1.89E+12 0 0 0 1.19E+09 1.97E+09 5 0 0 0 5.33E+10 0 0 0 0 6 3.29E+08 7.40E+08 0 3.46E+08 0 0 0 7.16E+07 7 0 0 5.24E+08 1.26E+09 0 1.63E+08 0 0 8 0 6.52E+07 2.28E+09 7.40E+09 0 5.73E+07 0 0 a. Data came from 1 China Statistical Yearbook(2007); 2 China Mining Industry Yearbook(2007); 3 China Nonferrous Metals Industry Yearbook(2007); 4 China energy statistics yearbook(2007); 5 China environmental statistics yearbook(2007); 6 China construction statistical yearbook(2007); 7 China building materials industry yearbook(2007). 2) Contribution analysis: Shown in Fig.2, the each components contribution to the system can be concluded. The internal environment is the main contributor to various components, which supply more than that of all components give to it, so it is the main producer of the societal metabolic ecosystem. The external environment supplies raw materials and products to the societal metabolic ecosystem, it is equivalent to the producer, and the value of the input-output is less than 1, which illustrates that China is an exporter on the whole. For China, in the industrial system of the societal metabolic ecosystem, the contribution index of the agricultural sector is higher than other production sectors, and low contribution value of the mining sector is because of the giant mining hidden flows. The manufacturing facilities, which are considered as the stocks, are not accounted in, and the large input make the value of the manufacturing sector is very low, reflecting the production efficiency of resource use of the manufacturing sector for the country is very low. The output of the building sector is only building waste without effective output, which is accounted as construction stocks, therefore the value is 0, so the building sector is production consumer of the industrial system - we call it prosumer. Without considering the output of human resources, there is only resource input and output of pollutants, that is to say, no effective output, so the domestic sector is the top consumer of the societal metabolic ecosystem. The great contribution of the possessing recycling sector to the reduction of pollutants and its low input investment make its contribution index higher than the other industrial sectors of the societal metabolic ecosystem. 3) Development pressure Analysis: Shown in Fig.3, for the environment, there are no pollutants. The value of the input of the internal environment is larger than that of the external environment, so we should consider increasing imports to reduce the resource pressure within the societal metabolic ecosystem for societal sustainable development. As the development pressure indexes of the agricultural sector and the mining sector are high, we can conclude that the agricultural sector and the mining sector cause great pressure to the environment because of the great amount of losses and pollutants, and they both extract and directly use the natural resources to cause great resource pressure to the societal metabolic ecosystem, so we should reduce the scale of the primary industry. As the total input of the manufacturing sector is far larger than the amount of pollutants, the index is low, but we also should improve its resource use efficiency and reduce emissions of pollutants. Characteristics of resources production and consumption of the building sector lead to low production efficiency, so we should increase recycling of building materials to reduce the input of building materials. The pollutants of the domestic sector accounts for more than half of the consumption, which shows the low recovery efficiency of pollutants for the domestic sector. For now, as the capacity of the possessing recycling sector can not meet the production and living level, we also should improve the efficiency and the scale of the possessing recycling sector to satisfy the increasing production and consumption demands for the sustainable development of the societal metabolic ecosystem of China. IV. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, the societal metabolic ecosystem of China was divided into different components to establish the model of societal metabolic system for improving the traditional black-box model and analyzing Chinas endosomatic and exosomatic metabolism processes. Based on the above analysis method and data characteristics, we can get the ecological hierarchy relationship in the societal metabolic ecosystem from producers to decomposer. The contribution index and the development pressure index were put forward to analyze the societal metabolism of china. Figure 2. The Contribution Index Pyramid Figure 3. The Development Pressure Index Pyramid Note: IE, the internal environment; AS, the agricultural sector; MIS, the mining sector; MAS, the manufacturing sector; BS, the building sector; DS, the domestic sector; PRS, the possessing recycling sector; EE, the external environment. Based on the ecological hierarchy relationship and the values of the indexes, we can find that, if we want to maintain the sustainable development of the Chinese society, we need to reduce the resource pressure and the environment pressure, and to improve the circulation ability. 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