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Giorgio Nebbia *

Warenkunde/Merceologia:The unifying Ground for Economie andNatural SciencesThis paper is a tribute to the great Polish eeonomistOskar LANGE (1904 - 1965), who most understoodthe importanee of the natural basis of the economiestudies.1 The integration of natural and economie accountaneiesThe economie science studies the exchange ofcommodities, Le. of physical goods. Any economieservice - transportation, energy use, manufacturing,family and community Iife - requires physical goods.However, the economie analysis limits itself to themeasure and description of the exchange of commodities and services that are aceompanied by monetarytransactions.Any good that cannot be bought or soldin exchange of money is out of the domain and interestof economics, although most of the events on earthand in the human life are not accompanied by suchexchange. This is one of the reasons for the delay orfailure of economics to deal with the environmental,food, raw materials and energy crisis, Le. with crisisdue to the scarcity of natura I resources and of thecarrying capacity of the environment.

A better description of what really happens in theeconomie world requires the integration of themonetary accountancy, Le. the description of the flowof money among economie subjects, with a "natural"accountancy, Le. with a description of the flow ofmatter and energy through a production process, atown, a territory, a nation.

The physical flow of commodities was in the mindof the proponents of any interindustry accountancy,from QUESNAY in the XVIII century, to early Sovietplanners in the 20's, to LEONTI EF and his followers.However, the description of the matter and energyflow through a national economy seemed - as it is an enormous task. So the econ'omic analysts turnedto the description only of the exchange associatedwith the monetary trllnsactions, and this is the stateof the art in the community of economists.

In' the same time, and independently, natura Iscientists - in particular the ecologists - have developedquite satisfaetory descriptions of the physical exchangeltin the domain of their interests: a lake, the sila, a forest,an animai community, the entire planet. Many scientistsin Warenkunde/Merceologia, in the recent decades, havebecome increa'singly interested at the description of thenatural and physical flow (of matter and energy) in theeconomie processes and phenomena, and have accumulated a considerable analytical experience and experimental data.

* Giorgio NEBBIA, Istituto di Merceologia,Universit, 1-70122 Bari, Italy

As a matter of fact, the quality of the final commodities, their com merce, conservation, deterioration andthe act itself of "consumption" - Le. the field ofinterest of Warenkunde/Merceologia - depend on howthe commodities are manufactured. The WarenkundeScientists are therefore entitled to try the integrationof the natural and monetary aeeountaneies; thisoperation is essential in order to assess how the manufacturing processes influence the quality of the commodities, and how both the natural and economie resourcesmay be best used.2 The structure of the eommodity systemEach economie process or cycle may be described asa flow of matter and energy from the environment tothe environment, according the lines indicated inFigure 1.The economie cycles differ from the "natural" orecological ones in that the former "function" with theaddiction of specifically human factors, Iike labor,technology, information, Le. historical experience,skill and memory. The "capital" may be consideredas a "value", or measure, of the amount of such technologyand information factors.In the manufacturing activities, the field more familiarto the studies of Warenkunde/Merceologia, each processdraws from the environments air and water (at no cost) ,that may be considered as free environmental commodities, and also "economie" commodities and rawmaterials, such as stones, minerals, energy sourees,vegetai and animai resources, for which a price is paid toa "owner" of such environmental goods.

Each process generates the required commodities(economie "goods"), that are "sold" to other processesor to services and families, i.e. to the activities of "consumption".Together with the economie commodities or "goods",

each process co generates residuals and wastes that maybe considered as commodities themselves. If they aredischarged (or "sold", at no price and no costI as suchin the environment, they represent "negative eommo-dities", or "bads".

In many cases, however, such residuals may betreated in order to recover stili useful materials, or todecrease the negative environmental impact. They maytherefore be considered as inputs for some other processof treatment or recycling.

A "recycling" process, on its part, requires air, andwater, and chemical commodities, and produces raw

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LABOR, TECHNOLOGY.INFORMATION

ENVI RONMENTALFREE COMMODITIES

ENVI RONMENTALECONOMI C

COMMODITIES

Figure 1 The environment/commodities system.

r- - - ---t----- -- ---- -- -- -- - -..,II

RECYCLlNG

/materials or commodities, and again other residualsand wastes.Finally, the analysis of the- physical flows in the "consumption" process shows that each final commodityis transformed, with generation of stili other residualsand wastes.

Many commodities are embodied or immobilized forsome time within each production or consumptionprocess; this is the case of cement and sand, of furnitu re, of the books collected in the libraries, of themachines, and so onoA stock reservoir of commodites must therefore beincluded in the analysis.3 A five-year pian of work in Warenkunde/MerceologiaA better description of the physical, or "natural",exchanges in a process or in an economy is very important for the solution of many present day problems,such as the environmental impact assessment of new production plants or processes, and the development of theso-called non-waste technologies.

An integration between the physical and monetaryflows in an economy may help to better understandsome concepts related to the "use value", or moregenerally to the "value" of the commodities. For instance it gives a quantitative meaning to concepts as the"environmental cost" of a commodity (e.g. the amountof residualsassociated with the production of a weightunit of such commodity), the energy or the water costof a commodity, the "energy content" of the nationalproduct (GNPl. the productivity of a manufacturingprocess, and so ono

The term "commodity" includes also the economicservices (e.g. transportation, the heating of buildings, thelighting of the officesl. ali associated with the use ofphysical commodities. I will indicate, for discussion,few lines of a work that could be carried, through aninternational collaborative effort, in the next, say, fiveyears. A review of the results could be presented in afuture international conference on Warenkunde/Merceologia.(1) For each process it is necessary to collect data on

FORUMWARE 9 (19811 Nr.1-2

I- ezw oCl:E i=i) ti)z ti)z (,lw ::::ti)l-::l,l- (,l.:::a: -..Io >->,l:> O::E(,l~z a:o(w-w ~I)'" a:i)

ENVI RONMENT

PROOUCTION

SERVICES ANOFAMILIES

RECYCLlNG

STOCKS

IMPORTS

Figure 2. Square matrix representation of the inputloutput flows from the natura I environment, to production, consumption, wastes, and back to the naturalenvironment. Various "parallel" matrices must beprepared for the flows in weight units, energy units,money units.

the flow of matter dnd energy, including the pricelessflows from, and to, the environment. The experienceof the work on a "Process Encyclopedia", carried byStatistics Canada, in Ottawa, may be useful.(2) It is necessary to give reasonable definitions of a"process" and of its physical boundaries. The processanalysis may be carried for an household, a building,a manufacturing plant, a city, an agricultural field, anation.At a regional level, the watershed seems the best territory unit for an economlc-ecological accountancy.(3) The flows of matter and energy (and m~ney) described in Figure 1 must be written in a form tractable

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with econometric and mathematical procedures. Thiscan be done with a squarematrix of the type describedin Figure 2.

Different matrices may contain intersectoral exchangesin weight units, energy units, monetary units. The hugeamount of data require the development of rathersophisticated mathematical and computational methods.(4) A preliminary work is required for "the unificationof the definitions of the various activity and environmentaI sectors. The available statistical data must beelaborated and better statisticaI surveys must be solicited.(5) The available and future data must be stored in aninternational data bank, possibly under the auspicesofinternational organizations. The cooperation of UNIDO

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(United Nations Industriai Development Organization),and of other United Nations agencies,including UNEP(United Nations Environment Program) could be solicited.(6) The project requires the cooperation of scientistsworking in different disciplines, in particular in the fieldof geography and ecology - more strictly interested atthe description of natural resources and the environment - and in the field of production engineeringandindustriai economics. The scientists in Warenkunde/Merceologia - commodity and process analystsseem however to have a very important and unifyingrole in the development of the knowledge necessaryfor an economie behavior, taking into account thephysical and natural basisof the economie, natural andhuman Iife.

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