Societal Metabolism in a Greek island, identifying sustainable practices : Societal Metabolism in a Greek island, identifying sustainable practices

Mediterranean islands are vulnerable to environmental and societal challenges. Weather conditions, scarcity of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, unmanaged waste, access to healthcare and education, economic inflation, and tourism growth are some of the threats the island of Ikaria faces nowadays. The study proposes a novel combination of methodologies that combine the identification of the island challenges by using semi-structured interviews and the conceptual framework with the application of Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) to define and quantify the characteristics of households in the socio-economic sector (time use, paidwork, expenses) and ecological terms (land use, energy). The approach is conducted as a fieldwork study on the island of Ikaria, Greece. The study concludes the need to achieve 1) sustainability through an interdisciplinary framework and 2) the use of household categories as a measurement for tackling environmental challenges.