 Hello and welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast. I am your host, Aristide from Metabolism of Cities, and in this podcast we interview researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities and how to reduce their net environmental impact in a socially just and a context-specific way. On this episode, I have the honor to chat with Professor Marina Fischer-Kowalski from Boku University, who founded the Institute of Social Ecology already some years ago and is the founding figure of the International Society of Industrial Ecology, the European Society of Ecological Economics, and her work is very interdisciplinary. It has evolved over the years, of course, but it includes elements of social sciences, environmental accounting, and some elements of policy and even politics. She has written countless reports, articles, and books on the topics of material flow analysis, industrial ecology, ecological economics, and many more. With all that being said, Marina, thank you a lot for taking the time. Could you perhaps give a brief introduction of yourself? Well, I start in the 80s. I've been trained as a sociologist. My first major work was a social report on inequality and how it had evolved after the Second World War in Austria. So this report was controversial, but in many ways well-received, and this trained me to use, on the one hand, all kinds of public statistics. On the other hand, to utilize the discourse between policymakers and scientists to make things change. And my next step was at OECD in Paris. I was involved in the program. It was not social indicators. It was quality of life and social indicators or something like that. I did a lot of work there. I loved it. But all of a sudden the United States of America found that this program is superfluous because if people have money, they live well, and it's not necessary to inquire into all other aspects of their living. So this was frustrating for me, as you can imagine. And coming back to Austria and having children, I was involved in, well, public conflict about the atomic energy plant that was planned in Austria and also a big water that they wanted to do to use the Danube for another energy creation. And so, yeah, this was just as a private person. All of a sudden two publishers wrote me later, why don't I do a report on inequality in the environment? And why don't I do... Yeah, I said, well, I'm not an expert there. So then you will write in a way that people understand you. Okay, I agreed. And I did do a book on state of the environment, measures in environmental politics, and reporting on the environment between, and that was a trick, the nine Austrian states. So I got them into competition, which... They love that, right? Benchmarking is already back in the day. Right, but that way I met all sorts of experts. I didn't have any natural science education yet, so I really needed other people, and I needed all these civil organizations that were fighting for better environment. So I got in the middle of that scene and looked for a new job. And all of a sudden I got offered the chance from an inter-university, interdisciplinary institute. Belonging to eight universities, they offered me to build up a research area on society and environment. Why not? That's what I did. And that was a wonderful offer. So that was the beginning of the Institute of Social Ecology? Yes, that was the beginning in the mid-80s. And of course I was used to international cooperation, so immediately I cooperated with the Wuppertal Institute, University of Leiden. So I found international partners to develop a new agenda. And I had learned while doing this report on the Austrian environment, I had learned that everybody was crazily focused on waste and emissions. And I said, my Christ, this is an irrational way to go about this policy agenda. You have to look at the inputs. And then you start understanding the outflows. And it makes no sense to stare at thousands of potentially poisonous or whatever outputs without looking at the amounts of inputs and regulate them and not deal with them. That makes sense today, I don't know. Today makes sense, but at that time it was weird. And there were a few intelligent officers in the Austrian Ministry of Environment who found that smart. And helped me finance certain research. So that's how it started. And so was that like a first material flow analysis, you would say back in the day? Yes, we did. I think worldwide the first material flow in Austria in 88, I think. And the other good experience was that you need to collaborate with very different scientists. You have to have interdisciplinary live collaboration. And that's much nicer than at most universities because at universities people all the time compete among one another who is more famous and who has the better message and whatnot. But if you depend on a physicist to explain to you why or how you can resolve a certain problem and to a chemist and to a biologist and botanist and agrarian scientist and whatnot, you don't compete with them, that's foolish. You accept their specific knowledge and by asking them questions that are unusual for them, they learn too. And that's how team building evolved. And my original team from the early 90s or late 80s, I mean, many of them are still in my team. So we really, yeah, we liked it together and we were very productive. But it's funny because normally or frequently it's the engineers that measure flows and then they want to somehow fit it with society and then they just want social scientists to kind of prove that they have taken it into account. But it's at the very end. In your case, you kind of changed the whole perspective and you went towards, let's say, the natural science or the accounting persons. And I think this shows and this has a completely different perspective into it. So I don't know if, how did they welcome a social scientist back in the day? Well, I was older. I was very experienced. I was a good fundraiser and I was a good organizer. So they were happy I was there. I had very, very few conflicts. It was amazing. I mean, there were some people who didn't fit or he left early or something. But basically we really grew together and now it's 40 people and it's still a very lively institution. No, I'm happy. And I think also because I was a woman. Why? Not because males don't feel immediately challenged and competed by a woman. I see that. I say that because you are a steed. I have a very nice project in Greece where I was getting Ireland for 20 years. And there I learned the message, never have more than two male Greek males together. You need a third woman. Otherwise they will only fight and not get your agenda going. It's crazy. I mean, but Austrians are not so warm like this, but not as extreme as the Greeks. Sorry for nationalism. No, no. Yeah. I feel you. I understand what you say. So how did... So I can imagine because in one of the books, I think it was in the Handbook of Industrial Ecology, you wrote a bit the history of industrial ecology. And of course you kind of talk about metabolism and you talked about Marx and how he used it at the late 19th century. Mid. Mid. Yeah, 80s, 60s or something like that. Manifesto in 44. Yeah. So really early. And so was that... Sorry, come again. Liebig was his inspiration for this. Yeah. So the biologist Liebig. Who invented the word metabolism, right? Yeah. And who was discussing this problem of separation of inputs, of physical separation of inputs and outputs, by sort of flooding the ways the effluence into the seas and gaining the food from land and not fertilizing the land with the effluence from food. Yeah. So this was the early idea by Liebig. And Marx read that and picked that up and incorporated that into his thinking. And did you in... When you studied, for instance, did you read this about metabolism and kind of made a link already in your mind with the term? Yeah. I think metabolism was... That was one of the natural science insights that was very impressive for me and very logical. And I think I carried that right along from my early times. Yeah. I think it's... Well, it's a nice metaphor. It's an easy metaphor for collaboration probably that... Exactly. That a social scientist, a natural scientist can easily see what we mean, you know, with a metabolism. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm interested. So how... Because it was in 2001, I think, that Eurostat published their economy-wide MFA. Mm-hmm. And this was, of course, partly done thanks to your work and the work of your team. So I'm wondering what was the discussion? How did you manage to convince Eurostat to have a... Because they already had, I guess, a state of the environment reports and environmental reporting, but having a systemic accounting. How... What were the discussions back in the day about this? It was very similar, like in Austria. I mean, they were also suffering from these thousands of efflents and emissions and waste. Yeah. And they could not come to grips with it. It was a miserable statistic. Every country did it differently. The distinctions were not clear. The amounts, the measures, even the measurement units were not clear. It was terrible, yeah? So they were very happy to see a sort of light at the horizon that maybe there could be a quantification that is more consistent and logical and can build on economic statistics and on what's there, yeah? And not invent a completely new system of recordings. So it was quite easy. It was also good for the economists. They understood that this was something that, I mean, they, of course, only wanted it money and not in towns, yeah? Or in June, yeah? Never mind. But it was something that communicated well between the disciplines and with the officers who had to deal with the existing statistics and suffer from them, yeah? So you kind of went to them or your team or your colleagues proposed that to them because did it take a lot of time to put this into practice? I'm kind of curious how, you know, a scientific discipline can really get in in policy and really influence it. And it was, it's a lot by chance. I mean, the World Resources Institute picked up the idea, did that big report. The Austrian Ministry of Environment was very proud of this new report or this new approach. And they went to the EU and told them what interesting things they had. The Austrian Environmental Agency was not so happy because it liked its thousands of indicators, but still they saw that they could find a way of aggregating their stuff in a reasonable form. So it was not against much resistance. It was, some didn't understand it or yeah, but it went smoothly as far as I remember. I mean, it took about, I mean, we did these big international conferences with the Wuppertal Institute and Leiden and Statistics Sweden. And then the Japanese came in who had this very early program on reduced reuse recycle. So this was already a pretty strong international bundle of both scientists and also some policy makers. It went smoothly. So that was the con-account conferences in the 90s. Con-account conferences, yeah. And then the Japanese invited me. So this spread from there, it spread. The only country who did not jump on that train was interestingly US. Yeah, the US is the only country and also, although the World Resources Institute strongly supported this and also other institutions in the US on the science reporting level, but in policy, no. I think the US sinks in money and nothing. No other unit has a chance. Yeah, although their input-output analysis tables are major compared to some European countries. So I think they're very good in accounting. But they are in money. It's all in money. And now also the multi-regional input-output tables that are in mass or in energy units, the Americans don't really participate in this. They don't understand the value of it. But it's like with the quality of life. I mean, my first OECD experience. So what do you think we have learned in 20, 30 years of using something standard? Because I think that's the value of it. A lot of people have used it, standardized it, and statistically it makes sense. It's now officially mandatory by EU states to use it. So we're now getting a wealth of information that's comparable, that's consistent. What have we learned? And what is the next boundary, do you think, in all of this? What you didn't mention also comes with it, we have long-time series. And for the first time we have long-time series that help us understand climate change, help us understand resource exhaustion, help us understand social inequality or international inequality between countries. So it is just a set of data or a set of indicators that can be used for many purposes. And of course, nowadays we see, I mean, 20 years ago we thought we just better be more friendly towards our environment and take care not to poison our forests and so on. But now we have a much more dramatic situation. We see it much more fundamentally. And so we need long-term indicators and insights on proportions that need to change that this kind of statistics delivers. And this you find in no other statistics practically. And that it is in physical units is so good because this is comprehensible to anybody non-American. Sorry. I see you still have a beef with Americans. No, I've been at Yale University and introduced that there and they were very friendly welcoming me and so on. So it's all Americans, okay. So I guess as you say, so we can see socio-metabolic regime shifts and understand the speed of some transitions that back in the day took 60 years. Now it takes 20 years to change from one, I don't know, energy career to another. May I say something to you? Yeah, yeah, please, please. This is exactly what I'm doing at the moment. And now studying the duration of energy transitions in the past. And so, you know, that started with the Dutch and the English in the 15th, 16th century and it took them 300 years. But then everybody else who came and that's practically all European States plus US it took them on average 50, 60 years to get out of this early transition. So to have 50 gigahertz per capita, let's say. This is getting longer and longer. I'm now analyzing three generations, this first generation that had finalized its energy transition by the Second World War, basically, then a second generation that had finalized the finalized but went through the early phase of its transition until 2000. And the third generation that is now still in the very, very early phases. And this, and it takes ever longer. And transition, you mean is it just the 50 gigahertz threshold or is it also the composition of the energy mix that you are looking at? I'm only looking at modern energy in gigahertz. So fossil plus nuclear. And how long does it take from the very early beginnings having half a gigahertz per capita. I mean, this is not discernible almost up to 50 because I've seen in my analysis that this is an important threshold. Yeah, and that took in the first generation, 58 years on average. If you leave out England and Holland, there are 300 years. That's something else. And then now it takes 80 years. So in the second generation, it takes 80 years. I mean, it's not. And in the third generation, I don't know because it's not finalized, but it doesn't look it accelerates. You can also see that there is much more turmoil about it. So you have. And that that also refers to your cities. The, the growth of cities is absolutely intimately linked to this early fossil transition. And, and also revolutions in half of the countries that went through that very early phase, there has been a revolution. And in the other half, they achieved the transition sort of more peacefully. Well, I guess because internationally, there was more availability of resources. So revolution also comes with scar city. I can imagine. No, no, no, no, it's rather the inadequacy of the political governance system with the newly emerging urban manufacturing. It's the working class in contrast to dependent farmers and to landlords who tried to keep their power and to dynasties who tried to keep their power. And all of a sudden republics. I mean, the Americans started with this, but most of these countries became republics or only. How do you call that? Constitutional monarchy. Yeah. So it was about politics. And it was about, about freedom of thought, freedom of separation of state and religion, et cetera, et cetera. That was the, that was the issue. And that would, that could crystallize in the cities because there was a communication base for it. There were lots of people together who could communicate and who were confronted with new situations and responded to them politically and communicatively. And this happens now too. In, in say, Nigeria or Uganda or whatever. But in this, that they belong to the third generation. They still have four giga joules. You know, we have 400. Yeah. No, Americans have 400. The Europeans have 200 giga joules fossil fuels. Yeah. And they have much more backlashes, interventions from colonial powers, interstate competitions, rivalries, tribal rivalries, religious rivalries. That's interesting. I mean, I'm just now analyzing. It's very interesting for me. I have to deliver by mid-March. But it's really, it's, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. And it doesn't accelerate or take it then technical people say, if the technology is there, then everybody picks it up and things work. No, it has. There are very defined social and political conditions under which it doesn't work. Yeah. It doesn't move on. There is, if you look at their timelines of energy there, they like this. And do you think it's only external factors? You'll see. Is it also internal factors? How much is a, is the balance internal? I mean. Yeah. With the, with the transition to fossil fuels, there was everywhere. There was an explosion of population. That's what. Yeah. Yeah. And this has to do that. On the countryside, people were under strict control of their sexuality. If you were not married, you couldn't have children. If you were married, you could, you tried to have many children because you needed their labor power. In the cities, this system of social control broke down. And so in the early phase, you get a huge population growth. And this also happens in African countries, for example, and did happen in Southeast Asian countries. And if this population grows out, grows the energy. Increase. Then you, you can't develop a new system of. Workable cities and workable manufacturer, et cetera. So it's also internal. It's not just. But there's a lot of external intervention. I mean, and now the Latin American. Environmental and social scientists say there is a kind of reprimarization of Latin American countries. They don't. Proceed with their manufacturer, but they rather proceed with the exploitation of their land and their forests. So. Yeah. It is a company with China being such a major manufacturer. This has created a field. Where it's difficult for emerging countries to. Find a reasonable production. Industrial production way. To. To sustain itself. They get flooded by cheap imports. No, it's a complex situation. And now there start. Interesting. Publications from. Even with. Southeast Asia. Whether they could circumvent. The transition to fossil fuels. So whether they would. Be able to sustain themselves. They get flooded by cheap imports. No, it's a complex situation. And now there start interesting. So whether they would. Be able to. Shift to renewables. Without a. Without further growth in fossil fuels. And nuclear energy. I'm a bit skeptical. Yeah. It's difficult because. As soon as they get some type of infrastructure, there's of course some locking effects and they're going to. Stay there for 40, 50 years. It's an investment and they need to stay within it. So. Except from. I mean, decentralization of, of energy. In a lot of cases, it's about renewables. You don't have a lot of decentralized. Fossil fuels. So. And the same thing with infrastructure in terms of roads. In terms of material stock. The more you can make it more. You can make it more modular and more, you know, adaptable. The more the less looking effect you will get. And the more you can adapt to the needs as well, because these cities. And perhaps we can get to this. I mean, these. How do we respond to. Or, or what are your, your thoughts and insights about. All of these new cities. How do we make them. Environmentally, let's say. Well, perhaps guide this transition. Yeah. Yeah, I've been collaborating. And that was a very interesting collaboration in the framework of the international resource panel. Of U.N. With marks willing who is a South African. And who was also now involved in the change of government in South Africa and so on. Which made him less active as scientists that you unfortunately. You can't do everything. Yeah. You can't do everything. And we have been. We have been together writing a report on. The possibility to have completely new cities, new style of cities in the South. And of course it. It lives on transport infrastructure. That's one of the main things. But yeah, he had very interesting ideas. I think it's also out as a book now. I haven't read it. I must admit. But we, we try to. Model. Sort of bifurcations. Where if you went in another direction, you would be locked in on another path. And that could be lead you to a different type of cities and a different type of metabolism. And that's what we were trying to. Simulate or to fantasize. Yeah, and, but he is the expert on this. I'm not really a city expert. My only city I analyzed really city was London. Okay. In the 80s. And London is good because it records all the inputs that come from outside. It records all the transportations. So it was with other cities. It's terribly difficult to, to really estimate the metabolism because so much happens outside and. In and out and in and out and difficult. Yeah, but that was an interesting, an interesting exercise on metabolism with this master student of mine who wasn't, who wasn't happy that I insisted that he finished that. Well, I helped him and it was an interesting study. Back in the day it was very easy to actually do a metabolism because you had, you know, closed doors and you had the tolls coming. You had the tolls to enter to the city. So you knew precisely the quantities because of taxes. Once again, the money, you know, so. I think, well, nine 18th or 19th century metabolism is much more easy than 20th or 21st century. Metabolism, but. Yeah. So. It's still very difficult. The, the also in 19th, 18th century, the Spanish researchers are very working on this. It's difficult because you have to understand the upstream flows. So what happens in the villages, what happens on the land in order to produce the food that the city gets here. And, and you have nine people eating for the ability to work on the countryside in order to feed one citizen. Yeah. So if you look at this in a more complex way, it's not so simple either. Yeah, but again, yeah. I mean, I'm thinking I wrote the, I read the papers of Sabin Barl on the social metabolic regimes of Paris. And over there there was typically they, they bought the land or the same thing with Matthew Gandhi, where he wrote about New York city and how it evolved over time. We learn how cities are buying land upstream for the, the upstream flows as well. So the, the, the land is also something interesting in, in knowing all of that. But yeah, could you let us know, is this your, your Greek experiment a way to crystallize and to make, to take out some complexity out of the, you know, the global economy and nations and be able to experiment locally. So from what I understand it's been, you, you, you're, you have been on holidays in Samothraki for a lot of years now. And how long is it the, the project you, you are doing in Samothraki? Since 2008. 2008. So what's it, was it a, a way to, to mix pleasure and, and work or how did you launch this? I was, I was on the camping going into the, about to go into the water. And I was approached by a nice Greek young lady who spoke only not very well English. And she said I should help them. And she has, she's looked in the internet and I'm a scientist and they have so much trouble because their community burns all waste openly and that poisons the whole, the whole island. And this is impossible. And they try to stop it and I should help them. That's how it started. That's how it started. And that's how I got involved. And I said, okay. And she was a very nice woman. I still collaborate with her. Yeah. And as, as you see from my biography, I always was interested to not just to write about things or, or understand how things work, but to make a difference. And this island is something where I think I could make a difference. I'm so proud in, in 216, the municipality for the first time in its existence has issued a program of change with, which I, which I consider very reasonable. Yeah. And I have to end the funny thing. I never learned Greek because I came there when I was 50 or so. And at that age, you don't learn such a language. But this was not so bad because. I could not fight with people and they couldn't fight with me. We had both had difficulties expressing ourselves or we needed a translator in between. So it was, there was a certain time delay of responses. So this interesting enough, every anthropologist would say, wow, wow, that's unprofessional. But this was helpful. This was helpful for evolving a calm and. Uncontroversial and respectful mutual communication. Interesting. I would, I wouldn't have sought that, but this is now it's my resume of it. So it's beautiful to see, to see, to have a little bit of a hand in making change happen. Yeah, that's, that's nice to see. And of course there's such a nice laboratory to have an island because at least you have, you know, the boundaries which are closed and perhaps a small control to the flows, not all of them, because I can imagine the imports. A lot of, most of the flows. But at least, yeah, the. No, because there's so many goats that. That's most of the flows. Yeah. That most of the flows, but you are of course right that from the commodities, the inflows are imports. And perhaps before some last questions, you said about you want to make a change and that this has been perhaps the, the automotive of a lot of, of your work. I can imagine that you were also influenced by May 68 and all of this heavy societal movements back in the day. I don't know whether you feel that these societal movements do a lot of change and whether, how do you perceive it today with all of the social movements that are happening? Do you see any resemblance? Do you feel that do you see something moving along as well? May I think that this. I'm sure I'm already tired. Climate movement by the young people is extremely important. And I think the 68 was also extremely important in changing the communication culture in many countries. And in ending the Vietnam war and. Yeah. So I think this is underestimated often the social movements, but often you see their impact, not immediately, but you see it when you analyze a longer timeline of history, you say, well, there was a turning point. And from then on certain things, important things went different. And I think that that's what I'm also analyzing now is my energy transitions. Who intervenes? What happens? Who is influential? What events make a difference? And so on. Yeah. Nowadays, fortunately with the internet is rich enough in material that you can do that. I mean. And from home. I would have spent the rest of my life in the National Library. Yeah. Okay. So let's just finish off with two small things. Yeah. I think you mentioned that you're working on this energy transition right now. Is there. What will you work on on 2021 apart from this? Well, I'll do an introduction to social ecology. That's what I'm invited with with a colleague. That should be done by summer. I hope. Yeah. I'm trying to have not so many plans. Honestly. I would, I will try to. I have already this, this was postponed because of COVID. I want to discuss the findings I have about the energy transition with historians. Historians are a difficult bunch of people because they, they mistrust generalizations. Yeah. They think every event is unique and so on and so on. So they are a challenge to. Yeah. So I think we should have a more general theory on things, how things evolve. And confronted with their detailed knowledge, but you have thought with it. So that's what I want to do. And I have an invitation to do that. But yeah, we'll see what happens. Great. Of course, my team involves me. So many things. Yeah. And so many things. So that's what I won't say. Yeah. Yeah. I think you recommend us and to everyone. Some book or some articles or a movie that. That you think are important to, to read and to watch. Movies. I think I'm, I'm no good for movies. Yeah. What about a book, something lately that you read or an article that really made an impression. Through a full day of working. I mean, our, our book on social ecology is quite a nice book for anyone who is willing to read something like that. And a movie. Yeah. Yesterday I heard a podcast by Bob Ayers who is. 89 or something. Yeah. He's an old friend of mine. He fortunately stopped skiing. Last time. Three years ago or so we were skiing together and I was. Frightened. Seeing him. Plunging down steep slopes with limited technique. Okay. But he doesn't see anymore, but he is still alive and talkative. I'll try to find that episode that then with. If you want, if you want, I can send you the. The internet address. Yeah, that would be great. I would be very curious to hear it. Yeah. And it's about the evolution of the energy concept. Yeah. And that's quite nice, but he. Yeah. It's not so easy to talk. But he's among very alive students who challenge him. And so it's. It's fun. Well, thank you so much. Marina for all of your time and all of your insights. Thanks everyone as well to, to listening until the end of this episode. Please share it with everyone. You think it's interesting. And once again, Marina, thank you very much.