Emergy and Ecological Justice: The Thought of Howard T. Odum

The recent webinar "A Emergia de HT Odum: Caminhos para a justiça entre homem e natureza e entre nações", organized by the Advances in Cleaner Production Network (ACPN), an international research network focused on sustainability issues and founded and coordinated by Paulista University (UNIP), has reignited international attention on the relevance of the concept of emergy, developed by the pioneer of systems ecology Howard T. Odum.

Emergy represents a new way to calculate the “cost” of any human activity, based on an ecosystem approach that assumes this cost should be measured according to what Nature has “invested” to provide the resources necessary for carrying out each of our projects.

In this video, Prof. Dr. Vito Comar, researcher at the Federal University of Grande Dourados, participates in the webinar series celebrating the centenary of Prof. H.T. Odum’s birth, showing how his studies on emergy remain cutting-edge today and serve as a fundamental starting point for the development of new interdisciplinary research and models.

In particular, his work is closely linked to the objectives of the LUMEN – Law of natUre and huMan Ecosystem approach project, which aims to demonstrate how the ecosystem approach, originally developed for biodiversity protection, can serve as the foundation of a transcultural and transnational eco-legal system, capable of overcoming the fracture between humans and nature that characterizes the Anthropocene crisis.

The full video of the webinar is available on the ACPN network’s YouTube channel.