El metabolismo económico regional español

This project analyzes the metabolic patterns of the different Spanish provinces with a detailed assessment of domestic extraction, interregional and international trade that helps to establsih the Spanish regional differences. Furthermore, the project entails the period 1996-2010 covering the peak of the Spanish real-estate bubble and the first years of the crisis.

This work is a novel contribution both to the statistical knowledge on the Spanish regional socioeconomic metabolism and its sustainability, as well as to the economic-ecological territorial interpretation of the recent cycle of Spanish economic boom (1996-2007), currently followed by a long period of economic, social and ecological crisis.

From the statistical point of view, and for the first time, an integrated database has been developed at regional level with standardized methodology (Eurostat) of the energy and material flows that cover the metabolism of the Autonomous Regions during the 1996-2010 period. Both for the period of time considered, as well as for the exhaustivity achieved and the indicators presented, this is a pioneering contribution on an international scale in regional metabolism studies.

From the point of view of economic interpretation, the main conclusion of the report highlights the existence of an unsustainable economic-ecological and territorial specialization within the Spanish economy. Thus, a certain polarization is identified between territories specialized in the extraction of resources (and dumping of waste), and others in consumption and accumulation that are very dependent, in turn, on the former. In the same sense, the regional study of the flows of energy and materials (through the systematic count of extraction and interregional as well as international trade), allows its authors to highlight how the patterns of unsustainability have advanced throughout the territory. These are dynamics that, far from traveling along dematerialization paths, have followed a path of "rematerialization" until 2007, followed by a considerable collapse since the beginning of the current crisis.