マテリアルフロー分析からみた人間活動と環境負荷

抄録

Material Flow Analysis/Accounting (MFA), which describes flows of energy and materials between the environment and human activities, and those among different sectors of human activities, is a useful tool for integrating social and natural dimension of environmental issues. This paper firstly reviews the MFA and related methodologies. MFA is classified as a material balance approach in environmental economics, a sort of environmental accounting, and has close relationship with the life cycle inventory and the input-output analysis. Then several practical results from application of the MFA are presented, including international comparison. Extended material flow of Japan, including ecological rucksacks was compiled along with harmonized framework for international collaborative study among four research institutions in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States. International comparison of indicators derived from the MFA enabled us to characterize dependency of industrialized economies on huge and inter-boarder resource flows. Finally perspective of future development of MFA is discussed, considering that MFA is one of the key elements within the IT (Industrial Transformation) project of the IHDP (International Human Dimension Program).