Poverty, Socioeconomic Metabolism, and the Multi-scale Integrated Analysis Approach

Envisioning socioeconomic systems as metabolic systems allowed Georgescu-Roegen to build a ‘flow-fund’ model of production. Striving to implement Georgescu-Roegen's bioeconomic paradigm some of his followers designed a method of meta-analysis (as a higher level of analysis) of the socioeconomic metabolism subject to the laws of thermodynamics called Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM). The resulting multi-scale integrated analytical toolkit was devised to investigate tradeoffs and synergies between different development goals. This paper introduces the basic MuSIASEM terminology and investigates the use of this approach to analyze the multidimensional concept of poverty, concept essential to a sustainable economy.