intro and recap / guest lecture/ and circular economy lecture

Menu of the day

• The Ocean as one economic entity

  • An introduction to circular economy and scenarios

  • Looking at the power of consumption

  • Poster skills

Outcomes of Friday

• Global supply chains and related sustainability issue are wicked problems

• - Stakeholder power imbalances, local circumstances, and negotiations exclude easy solutions

• - Who is ethical responsible for which solutions/contributions

• - Is a global company obliged to provide education?

• - Still Cocoa is a rather concentrated market (few stakeholders involved in the connecting parts of the supply chains)

  • few players, those big companies control whole market 

• - The six biggest companies control ~60% of the market

• -Value capture: brand manufacturers 40%, retailers 35%, farmers 3-7% (16% in the 1980ties)

• -many parts not transparent

Multiple dimensions involved

guest lecture

• sharing one ocean 

  • the ocean covers 70% of our planet

    • most is salt water

• history

  • often seen as a barrier

  • HMS challenger expedition : started mapping the ocean depth

  • there was also a exploitation of the ocean with whale hunting (60s and 70s peak)

  • the ocean was deemed limitless (anything from dumping, exploitation, to atomic bomb testing)

  • 1910-1997: jacques cousteau: public image on the importance of the ocean

• greenpeace

  • 1970s

• marine protected areas

  • the ocean os heterogenic though 

  • fish usually stay around the same place

  • so you protect static and mobile ones 

• primary productivity 

  • low nutrients even tho its warm  

  • big productivity is where conveyer belts hit land masses 

  • anything below 100 meters  is the europhtic zone does not go through photosynthesis

  • biomass is captured through thermaclyne but some triggles down to the deep sea

  • open ocean and coastal water —> color changes because light penetrates at different levels 

• tropic levels in the sea and on land 

  • aquatic animals have metabolic advantages over terrestrial animals 

    • cold blooded

    • do not need to fight gravity 

    • do not need the same bone structure

• distribution of biomass

  • plants are the majority on ground 

  • animal biomass 

    • arthropods and in the the ocean its fish

• the unnatural history of the sea

  • the anthropocene ocean

  • capture has stayed the same but aquaculture HAS increased

    • example: global fisheries 

      • effective effort has increased and ghg increased - we burn more fuel to catch the same

      • large pelagic fish has been replaced by small pelagic fish 

• tragedy of the commons

  • traditional perspective 

    • resources users are norm free maximizers of immediate gains who will not coop to overcome the commons of the dilemmas they face

    • designing tules to change incentives of participants is a relatively simple task

    • often requires central direction

  • common pool resources management

    • ex: resulted in us eating fish by moving down the chain

    • we have change the growth and maturity of fish (cod has becoming smaller because we drive the natural selection)

    • the cod collapse of the grand banks:

      • brought back the same amount of fish but only bcuz they had better tech

• resilience

  • mobilization (accessible carbon nutrients and energy) —→ conservation ((climax, consolation, k strategy)—> exploitation (restrategy, pioneer, opportunist) —> creative destruction (fire, storm, etc)

  • capital value is destroyed when we change from a steady state to a degraded state 

  • organization and connection decreases

    • we have a steady state and regime changes 

    • a: low intensity production ecosystem —> lots of nutrients and fish 

    • b: local high intensity prod ecosystem —> degraded state —> fossil fuels 

      • a) coral reefs 

        • overfishing 

        • eutrophication (lots of algae)

        • macroalgae 

      • b) kelp forests 

        • sea otters

        • hunting

        • sea urchins 

      • c) small pelagic fish 

        • overfishing 

        • zoo plankton 

        • jellyfish

• env threats to the ocean 

  • mangroves and segrass removal 

  • reduced albeado 

• importance of aquatic foods EAT lancet v1.0

  • vague 

  • blue food assessment is a follow up of it 

    • all the foods in the ocean

    • very diverse (2500 species)

    • demand could double by 2050

      • we need more aquaculture

• blue foods are unequally distributed 

  • countries produce and consume less when wealth formal education and voice and accountability are lacking 

  • aquatic foods are less affordable where gender inequality id greater 

  • policies linked to more just food system outcomes focus son 

    • human rights 

    • inclusive decision making processes

    • identifying and challenging drivers of injustice

• conclusion 

  • the ocean is heterogeneous

  • blue food is important especially in south 

  • blue food can be more sustainable but differ by species and production 

  • ocean is under stress where they shift to new states that are less productive 

Circular economy Concepts & Scenarios

• Our lecture’s learning objective

• 1. Describe the concepts of linear and circular economy

  2. Understand different frameworks of circular economy

  3. Understand basic types and structure of scenario

resources and reserves

• resources are finate

What is the Circular Economy?

• we can reuse some materials 

• some goods can be remanufactures, recycles redistribution, and product life extension

• ex: broken washing machine 

Linear economy

• • extraction—> production—> consumers —> end of life

  • take make use dispose

  • outcomes: waste dumps and incineration dumps

Framework: R strategies

• Rs:

  - Refuse:

  make product redundant

  - Reduce:

  increase efficiency in

  production/use

  - Reuse:

  use product again

• - Repair:

  fix broken components

  - Refurbish:

  fix & “update” old products

  - Remanufacture:

  use old parts in new products

• - Repurpose:

  reuse in different function

  - Recycle:

  material recovery

  - Reduce by design:

  design products to be circular

changing vs fixing the system

Discussions

• Do you think all R’s are equally important?

• How do producers and consumers share responsibility in a circular economy

  • consumers: decisions with buying (refuse) & recycle

  • urban mine: resources stored in infrastructure that can be reused

Another Framework – Intended circularity

example:

• better software to extend cellphone lifespan —> reuse

• cloud computing —> rethink or refuse

• swap feats: higher utility —> you can repair bikes

Circular economy is only a mean to an end

• the big challenges are planetary boundaries

• what are scenarios?

  • A scenario is a description of how the future may

    develop, based on a coherent and internally consistent

    set of assumptions, about key drivers including

    demography, economic processes, technological

    innovation, governance, lifestyles, and relationships

    among these driving forces. (IPCC, 2021

• Features

  • Scenarios are a path, not a simple static snapshot. They

    are not a forecast, not a prediction

  

• Types of futures

  • • Possible – “might” happen (future knowledge)

    • • Possible – The widest range of scenarios, including all

      possibilities

  • • Plausible – “could” happen (current knowledge)

    • Plausible – Possibilities that could happen given the bounds of uncertainty

  • • Probable – “likely to” happen (current trends)

    • • Probable – The vision we have for possibilities we want to see come true

  • • Preferred – “want to” happen (value judgement)

    • • Preferred – The vision we have for possibilities we want to see come true

Scenario types

Scenario’s structure

• future is further based on indicators

Circular Economy Scenarios

• “Consistent and coherent descriptions of possible future developments if circular economy strategies were implemented”

• Considerations for Circular Economy Scenarios

  • The aim is to explore, not to predict (what-if scenarios)

    • Assumptions are key for reliable scenarios

    - Garbage in = garbage out

    - Assumptions cover different areas of influence (technological, economic, political, social,..)

    • Supply/demand balance

Simple circular economy scenario

• we reuse the most steel

Create your own scenario

• What would be the future global material extraction for 2030 in a

  business-as-usual scenario?
  

• these are prob not linear 

Discussion

• Do you think a linear trend is suitable for projecting the future global material extraction?

  • what type of materials are being extracted?

• How can circular economy measures influence global material extraction?

  • circular economy can increase material extraction to set it up

Revisit

• Linear vs. circular economy

• Frameworks for circular economy (R strategies, Slow-narrow-close regenerate)

• Basic structure of scenario