Mercury Stories: Understanding Sustainability Through a Volatile Element

In Mercury Stories, Henrik Selin and Noelle Eckley Selin introduce and apply their original systems theory, a human–technical–environmental (HTE) framework coupled with an illustrative matrix approach, to an issue of sustainability: the mercury system. The underlying idea of the system perspective is that “a system is a connection of individual components that together produce results unobtainable by the components alone” (19). It is important to examine social, technological, and environmental factors and their interactions together to truly understand the sustainability system. This book urges social and natural scientists and engineers to broaden analytical scopes in their own fields, while analytically and empirically connecting with the field of sustainability science. The authors frame four research questions: What are the main components of systems relevant to sustainability? In what ways do the components of these systems interact? How can actors intervene in these systems to change their effects? What insights can be drawn from analyzing these systems? In addressing these questions, they apply the HTE framework to different aspects of the mercury issue: pollution and management, human health, the atmosphere, products and processes, artisanal small-scale gold mining, and mercury. They first identify and classify five system components of sustainability: material (human, technical, and environmental components) and nonmaterial (institutional and knowledge components). Then, via their matrix, they identify how the three material components interact with each other within the context of the two nonmaterial components, which provides multiple interaction pathways. Interaction pathways are documented by remarkably in-depth studies on mercury, which incorporate evidence from history and social and environmental sciences. For example, in commerce, through usage in products, industrial processes, and artisanal small-scale gold mining, mercury is emitted and released into the environment (an interaction between technical and environmental components). Under specific ecosystem conditions, discharged mercury is converted to methylmercury, which is much more toxic than elemental mercury and adversely affects living organisms, including humans (an interaction between environmental components).