Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
more vulnerable systems. Complex systems may be very resilient, but they
may also have thresholds beyond which they shift to different states rapidly
and unpredictably. Maintaining the performance of both human and natu-
ral systems within desirable limits is an important goal supported by indus-
trial ecology.
5. Industrial ecology uses such systems techniques as mass-flow analysis to
understand economic and environmental systems, and the linkages among
them.
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6. Industrial ecology as an objective field of study views private firms as
central to mitigating environmental impact, and seeks to understand how
their behavior might become more environmentally appropriate. In this, it
avoids the pattern of blame and ideology which has become rather preva-
lent in the environmental policy debates.
APPLYING THE PRINCIPLES: EARTH SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Currently, industrial ecology principles and learnings are being integrated
into methodologies such as Life Cycle Assessment, Design for Environ-
ment, and Integrated Pest Management. These are sector-specific, firm-
specific, and sometimes product-specific applications. But perhaps a better
idea of the power of the principles can be obtained by considering their
application in Earth Systems Engineering, which I have defined as “the
study and practice of engineering human technology systems and related
elements of natural systems in such a way as to provide the required func-
tionality while facilitating the active management of the dynamics of, and
minimizing the risk and scale of unplanned or undesirable perturbations in,
strongly coupled human and fundamental natural systems.”
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The raison
d'etre of Earth Systems Engineering is the recognition that, primarily as a
result of the Industrial Revolution, the scale and the scope of human
impacts on natural systems are now such that their dynamics are increas-
ingly dominated not by life processes as a whole but by the activity of one
species—ours.
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Many of the resulting perturbations, such as human
impacts on the nitrogen, carbon, hydrologic, and heavy metal cycles, are
unanticipated, problematic, and highly systemic. Engineering and managing
these impacts on a going-forward basis will, inevitably, rely on industrial
ecology studies and methodologies to provide critical elements of the
required science and technology base. This is particularly difficult because
