Reflexive Resource Provision: An epistemic diagnostic perspective for assessing resource-provision pathways

Abstract

Industrial Ecology (IE) provides diverse approaches for analysing resource use, environmental pressures, and socio-metabolic transformations, yet their findings are often related to broader claims about the viability of resource-provision pathways. This paper proposes Reflexive Resource Provision (RRP) as an emerging research field that takes primary resource provision as its object of inquiry and treats it as a socio-ecological decision space in which levels and configurations of provision are continuously reconsidered in relation to geophysical conditions, ecological limits, and societal needs. We develop epistemic reflexivity as a foundational orientation of RRP and examine how heterogeneous forms of IE evidence can and cannot support broader claims about resource-provision viability. To establish an initial epistemic foundation, we conduct a comparative cross-case synthesis of six studies from different resource-provision contexts, methods, spatial scales, and types of evidence. The analysis identifies recurring tensions concerning representation, scale, system and causal scope, temporality, evidence adequacy, and evidential reach. These tensions are synthesised into the RRP Diagnostic Prism, a provisional analytical architecture for examining the relationship between representation, evidence, and claim. The paper establishes this epistemic foundation as a first analytical entry point into RRP and outlines a broader research agenda for developing the field.

Abstract as supplied by the indexing source. © the authors / publisher.