ESTUDO PRELIMINAR DA SUSTENTABILIDADE AMBIENTAL DO ABC PAULISTA A PARTIR DA SÍNTESE EM EMERGIA

Abstract

The great growth of the urban populationgenerates a great change in the life style, land use, energydemand and consequent environmental pressure. In thisway, studies related to environmental sustainability of urbansystems and the availability of natural resources are ofmajor importance. EMergy is considered to be a powerfultool to environmental accounting and measures both naturaland human resources to generate products and services. Theevaluation through eMergy synthesis of cities, states, nationsand its base resources provides large scale perspective toevaluation of environmental areas and can help selection ofpolicies for public benefit. This preliminary study applies theeMergy synthesis to evaluate the sustainability of the citiesthat compose the ABC Paulista, accounting the local freerenewable resources that give support to the cities.Index Terms ⎯  eMergy synthesis, environmentalaccounting, environmental sustainability, urban systems.