Social Metabolism at the National Scale

Abstract

Regarding material exchanges and flows, every Nation State (N) ultimately functions in the same way as a unit of appropriation/production (P), which means N reproduces the same operational processes of P, but at an exponentially higher scale. At the national scale, within the territory of each unit of N, material (produce, forest products, crops) and energetic (foodstuffs, organic fertilizers) inputs are obtained from domestic extraction of resources, whose flow can be divided in proceeding from each of the following three classes of environment: Utilized Environment (UET), Transformed Environment (TET), and Conserved Environment (CET). The input flow of N is the result of the sum of all the input, circulation, transformation, and excretion flows from every P within its national territory.