Material flow accounting of rural communities: principles and outcomes in South East Asia

The paper develops a system of local Material Flow Analysis that links material flows to issues of land use transition, globalisation and food security. This system (rMFA) is then applied to villages in Vietnam, the Philippines and Laos. The rMFA shows that these villages greatly differ in terms of these indicators, and with that, in terms of risks and future-oriented policies, issues that remain hidden in standard MFA indicators, as illustrated by an MFA application in India. The methodological conclusion is that rMFA offers a good tool for theory-connected insights and cross-country comparisons.