Image: NASA
We wrote Mercury Stories for an interdisciplinary audience, and in every chapter we address three sets of topics for communities of researchers who are interested in different aspects of sustainability from varying academic perspectives. Here, we summarize some key insights from the mercury systems related to systems analysis for sustainability, sustainability definitions and transitions, and sustainability governance.
For those interested in systems analysis for sustainability: First, we show that new systems-oriented analytical approaches such as the HTE framework and the associated matrix-based approach can help account for dynamics of human, technical, environmental, institutional, and knowledge components in an integrated way. Multidisciplinary perspectives and analyses that account for two-way interactions between environmental processes and society are especially relevant to sustainability-focused studies.
Second, adaptive capacity stands out as an important dynamic that influences and explains system behavior over time, and it can have both positive and negative effects on human well-being. In an example of beneficial effects, innovation towards mercury-free alternatives to products maintained the ability to continue to provide socially valuable goods such as thermometers, light bulbs, and batteries over time. In contrast, mercury suppliers adapt to find new both legal and illegal ways to sell mercury for use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining, with harms to human health and the environment, despite increased efforts to intervene and stop the flow of mercury into mining communities.
Third, some of the concepts often applied to describe sustainability-relevant systems – such as the Anthropocene and planetary boundaries – face substantial challenges when applied to the mercury case. It is particularly difficult to determine when global-scale human-induced change characteristic of the Anthropocene began in the mercury case; doing so requires integrated consideration of both societal flows and environmental data. Further, applying the concept of a planetary-scale boundary is challenging for a toxic substance like mercury, which pose both local and global risks simultaneously. A singular focus on a planetary boundary obscures the fact that localized mercury use and exposure can be highly problematic from a sustainability perspective.
For those interested in sustainability definitions and transitions: First, we conclude that different values attributed to benefits and risks by people in varying positions of influence complicate analysis of human well-being across populations and over time, challenging efforts to define sustainability. Further, preventing extraction of a non-renewable resource like mercury does not always benefit contemporaneous and future human well-being, and accounting for the value of assets that might become liabilities in the future is a major challenge for efforts to define sustainability. The existence of trade-offs in benefits and costs of mercury uses also reinforces the importance of considering equity and power when defining and analyzing sustainability.
Second, many transitions toward sustainability were characterized by incremental change, but some nevertheless had substantial benefits for human well-being of both present and future generations. The introduction of new technology had multifaceted implications for sustainability transitions in the mercury systems, with both positive and negative elements. Incremental changes can add up to support more fundamental change. The fact that fundamental change can come from cumulative incremental steps makes it difficult to empirically distinguish between different degrees of transitions. The mercury systems also provide further evidence that a substitution for a known hazardous substance can lessen one kind of damage, but may create new problems. For example, the environmental and human health implications of the use of PFAS as substitutes for mercury-based technology in chlor-alkali plants remain unknown.
Third, different patterns and modes of transitions with interacting dynamics occurred simultaneously. Transitions in the mercury systems towards greater sustainability reflected economic and technical drivers and scientific advances related to the harmful effects of mercury and the availability of mercury substitutes in medicine, commercial products, and manufacturing processes. Distributions of agency and power often played a substantive role in driving transitions. For example, doctors, employers, and corporations had a large influence on transitions away from the use of mercury in medicine and in commercial applications, while the interests of patients and workers were less influential.
For those interested in sustainability governance: First, ensuring that institutions fit the physical problems that they are designed to address involves paying close attention to material system components and their interactions. It is important that a governance approach to an individual sustainability issue take into consideration its unique biophysical as well as societal characteristics. The Minamata Convention attempts to engage different aspects of the mercury issue by setting out a global-scale legal framework for action on the full lifecycle of mercury, but our analysis of the mercury systems also shows the benefits of designing a polycentric governance approach across global, regional, national, and local scales.
Second, insights from the mercury systems show that a combination of interventions is often necessary to enhance human well-being for both present and future generations. Governance strategies can also be implemented to address multiple sustainability issues simultaneously through careful institutional design, as it is at least sometimes possible to design interventions on one sustainability issue so that they positively affect another one as well. At the same time, it is important to recognize that efforts to enhance governance synergies across sustainability issues can have drawbacks in the form of political disagreements being transferred from one forum to another.
Third, evaluating institutional effectiveness such as the effectiveness of the Minamata Convention or a national law requires simultaneously considering environmental and societal factors that shape outcomes in the context of advancing sustainability. Evaluating whether governance strategies enhance present and future human well-being is analytically challenging, in part because of the difficulty in attributing causality in complex, adaptive systems. Institutionally focused evaluations of treaty effectiveness such as the one mandated for the Minamata Convention can be aided by the simultaneous use of outcome indicators (focusing on changes in environmental concentrations, for example) and process indicators (looking at practical implementation measures taken by parties).