Socioeconomic metabolism in Taiwan: Emergy synthesis versus material flow analysis

The concept of socioeconomic metabolism can be traced back to 19th century and can provide a useful framework for both natural and social scientists to study the interrelations between human societies and their natural environments. Many studies on socioeconomic metabolism incorporated material flow analysis, but there are still many unresolved methodological issues such as its units, aggregation techniques, and omitted energy flows. The importance of the relationships between land use and socioeconomic metabolism has also been raised recently. In order to combine material flows and energy flows, this paper incorporates emergy synthesis to overview the socioeconomic metabolism of Taiwan during 1981–2001. Due to the lack of natural resources, the extraction of domestic non-renewable materials has decreased since 1980s and have to be supplemented by import. The requirements of imported energy flows has increased substantially with industrial development. Difference between results from material flow analysis and emergy synthesis is also discussed. It is found that material flow analysis alone could not identify the essential fact of Taiwan's increasing dependence on energy use. Furthermore, the qualitative characteristics of materials flows are also neglected. The analysis of the relations between land use and socioeconomic metabolism indicates that the changes of land use affect the socioeconomic metabolism in Taiwan. However, due to the lack of information, whether the change of socioeconomic metabolism has triggered land use change still need further investigation.