Acknowledgements

This book is the end result of a process that began with a conference in Tokyo in September 1988, sponsored jointly by the United Nations University (UNU), UNESCO, and the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFIAS). This conference was convened to explore ways of broadening the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) to consider explicitly the human dimensions of global change.

The term "industrial metabolism" was coined during the preparatory stages of that conference, to encapsulate this interaction. Selected papers from the Tokyo conference were published in the International Social Science Journal (ISSJ) in 1989. A second, follow-up, workshop on "Industrial Metabolism" was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, under the joint auspices of the UNU and IFIAS, in 1989. The present volume was conceived at that workshop.

We are extremely grateful for the financial support of the UNU for this book, and for the personal support and assistance of Dr Walter Shearer, New York Office of the UNU, and Dr Roland Fuchs, Vice-Rector of the UNU in Tokyo. We would like to thank Professor Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, of Wuppertal Institut, and Professor Robert H. Socolow, of Princeton University, for their valuable comments on the first draft of the manuscript.