Biogeochemical cycling in the anthropocene: Quantifying global environment-economy exchanges

The Global Biogeochemical Cycles (GBCs) are extremely important biosphere functions, critical to the maintenance of conditions necessary for all life. Importantly, perturbation of the GBCs has the potential to affect the structure and functioning of the Earth system. While biogeochemistry research to date has largely focused on ‘natural’ processes, human economic activities are increasingly recognised as integral components of the GBCs. In this paper we develop a novel systems model, the Environmental Social Accounting Matrix (ESAM), of coupled GBCs (explicitly covering Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Sulphur) with a particularly focus on the environment-economy interface. We illustrate diagrammatically the level at which the global economy, through its transformation of useful resources (i.e. raw materials) into residuals (i.e. wastes, pollutants, emission), appropriates biogeochemical processes. Then through an application lens we discuss the ESAM’s potential applications and extensions. The ESAM represents one of only a few attempts to develop an integrated model of the Earth system, explicitly capturing the interaction in the element-based GBCs between both natural and human processes.