Ecological footprint

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Ecological footprint (EF) analysis tries to measure human demand on the Earth's ecosystems and natural resources. It compares human consumption of natural resources with planet Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate them. It is an estimate of the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate (if possible) the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste, given prevailing technology and current understanding. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how many planet Earths it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. While the measure is widely used,[citation needed] some also criticize the approach.

Ecological footprint analysis

Ecological footprint for different nations compared to their HDI. Recent evidence[citation needed] suggests that improvements in the Human Development Index in most cases generally results in an increase in its ecological footprint.

The first academic publication about the ecological footprint was by William Rees in 1992.[1] The ecological footprint concept and calculation method was developed as the PhD dissertation of Mathis Wackernagel, supervised by Rees at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, from 1990-1994.[2] Originally, they called the concept "appropriated carrying capacity".[3] To make the idea more accessible, Rees came up with the term "ecological footprint," inspired by a computer technician who praised his new computer's "small footprint on the desk." In early 1996, Wackernagel and Rees published the book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.

Ecological footprint analysis compares human demand on nature with the biosphere's ability to regenerate resources and provide services. It does this by assessing the biologically productive land and marine area required to produce the resources a population consumes and absorb the corresponding waste, using prevailing technology. This approach can also be applied to an activity such as the manufacturing of a product or driving of a car. This resource accounting is similar to life cycle analysis wherein the consumption of energy, biomass (food, fiber), building material, water and other resources are converted into a normalized measure of land area called 'global hectares' (gha).

Per capita ecological footprint (EF) is a means of comparing consumption and lifestyles, and checking this against nature's ability to provide for this consumption. The tool can inform policy by examining to what extent a nation uses more (or less) than is available within its territory, or to what extent the nation's lifestyle would be replicable worldwide. The footprint can also be a useful tool to educate people about carrying capacity and over-consumption, with the aim of altering personal behavior. Ecological footprints may be used to argue that many current lifestyles are not sustainable. Such a global comparison also clearly shows the inequalities of resource use on this planet at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

In 2003, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita. The U.S. footprint per capita was 9.6 gha, and that of Switzerland was 5.1 gha per person, while China's was 1.6 gha per person.[4] [5] The WWF claims that the human footprint has exceeded the biocapacity (the available supply of natural resources) of the planet by 20%.[6] Wackernagel and Rees originally estimated that the available biological capacity for the 6 billion people on Earth at that time was about 1.3 hectares per person, which is smaller than the 1.8 global hectares because it did not include bioproductive marine areas.[7]

A number of NGO websites allow estimation of one's ecological footprint (see Footprint Calculator, below).

Ecological footprinting is now widely used around the globe as an indicator of environmental sustainability.[citation needed] It can be used to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy. It can be used to explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organizations, industry sectors, neighborhoods, cities, regions and nations.[8] Since 2006, a first set of ecological footprint standards exist that detail both communication and calculation procedures. They are available at www.footprintstandards.org and were developed in a public process facilitated by Global Footprint Network and its partner organizations.

Methodology

The ecological footprint accounting method at the national level is described in the Living Planet Report or in more detail in Global Footprint Network's method paper. The national accounts committee of Global Footprint Network has also published a research agenda on how the method will be improved. [9]

There have been differences in the methodology used by various ecological footprint studies. Examples include how sea area should be counted, how to account for fossil fuels, how to account for nuclear power (many studies simply consider it to have the same ecological footprint as fossil fuels), which data sources used, when average global numbers or local numbers should be used when looking at a specific area, how space for biodiversity should be included, and how imports/exports should be accounted for.[6].[7] However, with the new footprint standards, the methods are converging.[citation needed]

Ecological footprint studies in the United Kingdom

The UK's average ecological footprint is 5.45 global hectares per capita (gha) with variations between regions ranging from 4.80 gha (Wales) to 5.56 gha (East England).[5] Two recent studies have examined relatively low-impact small communities. BedZED, a 96-home mixed-income housing development in South London, was designed by Bill Dunster Architects and sustainability consultants BioRegional for the Peabody Trust. Despite being populated by relatively "mainstream" home-buyers, BedZED was found to have a footprint of 3.20 gha due to on-site renewable energy production, energy-efficient architecture, and an extensive green lifestyles program that included on-site London's first carsharing club. The report did not measure the added footprint of the 15,000 visitors who have toured BedZED since its completion in 2002. Findhorn Ecovillage, a rural intentional community in Moray, Scotland, had a total footprint of 2.56 gha, including both the many guests and visitors who travel to the community to undertake residential courses there and the nearby campus of Cluny Hill College. However, the residents alone have a footprint of 2.71 gha, a little over half the UK national average and one of the lowest ecological footprints of any community measured so far in the industrialised world.[10] Keveral Farm, an organic farming community in Cornwall, was found to have a footprint of 2.4 gha, though with substantial differences in footprints among community members.[11]

Criticisms

The approach has been criticized on various grounds. Much cited, early criticisms were published by van den Bergh and Verbruggen in 1999.[12] A more complete review commissioned by DEFRA provides the most updated independent assessment of the method so far. [13].

Grazi et al. (2007) have performed a systematic comparison of the ecological footprint method with spatial welfare analysis that includes environmental externalities, agglomeration effects and trade advantages. [14] They find that the two methods can lead to very distinct, and even opposite, rankings of different spatial patterns of economic activity.

In most high-income nations, fossil fuel makes up more than 50 percent of the ecological footprint. This carbon footprint is based on estimating the land area and plants, such as new forests, needed to sequester (recapture) the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels. Critics argue that this is a very unlikely and uneconomic way to stop global warming. There are many other methods for mitigation of global warming which do not require such large land use.[12] There have been efforts to address this old criticism, such as calculating the amount of land necessary to provide sufficient biomass to meet the energy demand. (This is different from sequestering fossil carbon as it brings human energy systems into the continuous carbon cycle.) However the options are limited because, as formulated, the EF can only account for consumption of renewable resources, or perfect substitutes thereof as if the renewable resource had been used.

Calculating the ecological footprint for densely populated areas, such as a city or small country with a comparatively large population — e.g. New York and Singapore respectively — may lead to the perception of these populations as "parasitic". This is because these communities have little intrinsic biocapacity, and instead must rely upon large hinterlands. Critics argue that this is a dubious characterization since mechanized rural farmers in developed nations may easily consume more resources than urban inhabitants, due to transportation requirements and the unavailability of economies of scale. Furthermore, such moral conclusions seem to be an argument for autarky. Some even take this train of thought a step further, claiming that EF denies the benefits of trade. Therefore, the critics argue that that EF can only be applied globally.[15]

The method seems to reward the replacement of original ecosystems with high-productivity agricultural monocultures by assigning a higher biocapacity to such regions. For example, replacing ancient woodlands or tropical forests with monoculture forests or plantations may improve the ecological footprint. Similarly, if organic farming yields were lower than those of conventional methods, this could result in the former being "penalized" with a larger ecological footprint.[16] Of course, this insight, while valid, stems from the idea of using the footprint as one's only metric. If the use of ecological footprints are complemented with other indicators, such as one for biodiversity, the problem could maybe be solved. Indeed, WWF's Living Planet Report complements the biennial EF calculations with the Living Planet Index of biodiversity.[17] Manfred Lenzen and Shauna Murray have created a modified Ecological Footprint that takes biodiversity into account for use in Australia [18].

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Rees, William E. (1992). "Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: what urban economics leaves out". Environment and Urbanisation. 4 (2): 121–130. doi:10.1177/095624789200400212. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  2. ^ Wackernagel, M. (1994), Ecological Footprint and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: A Tool for Planning Toward Sustainability. Ph.D. Thesis, School of Community and Regional Planning. The University of British Columbia. Vancouver, Canada.
  3. ^ Wackernagel, Mathis, 1991. "Land Use: Measuring a Community's Appropriated Carrying Capacity as an Indicator for Sustainability;" and "Using Appropriated Carrying Capacity as an Indicator, Measuring the Sustainability of a Community." Report I & II to the UBC Task Force on Healthy and Sustainable Communities, Vancouver.
  4. ^ Living Planet Report 2006 outlines scenarios for humanity's future. Global Footprint Network. Retrieved: 2007-08-15
  5. ^ a b Chambers, N. et al (2004) Scotland’s Footprint. Best Foot Forward. ISBN 0-9546042-0-2.
  6. ^ Global ecosystems 'face collapse' BBC News. Retrieved: 2007-05-18.
  7. ^ Wackernagel, Mathis & Rees, William (1996)"Our Ecological Footprint" (New Society Press)
  8. ^ Global Footprint Network "Ecological Footprint: Overview." Retrieved on August 1, 2007.
  9. ^ [http://www.brass.cf.ac.uk/uploads/fullpapers/Kitzes_et_al_M65.pdf Justin Kitzes, Alessandro Galli, Marco Bagliani, John Barrett, Gorm Dige, Sharon Ede, Karlheinz Erb, Stefan Giljum, Helmut Haberl, Chris Hails, Sally Jungwirth, Manfred Lenzen, Kevin Lewis, Jonathan Loh, Nadia Marchettini, Hans Messinger, Krista Milne, Richard Moles, Chad Monfreda, Dan Moran, Katsura Nakano, Aili Pyhälä, William Rees, Craig Simmons, Mathis Wackernagel, Yoshihiko Wada, Connor Walsh and Tommy Wiedmann. A Research Agenda for Improving National Ecological Footprint Accounts] Retrieved: 2007-11-11
  10. ^ Tinsley, S. and George, H. (2006) Ecological Footprint of the Findhorn Foundation and Community. Moray. Sustainable Development Research Centre, UHI Millennium Institute.
  11. ^ Radical Routes (2006) How to work out your Ecological Footprint. Leeds. Radical Routes Ltd. Available to order or download on the Radical Routes web site
  12. ^ a b J.C.J.M. van den Bergh and H. Verbruggen (1999), Spatial sustainability, trade and indicators: an evaluation of the ‘ecological footprint’, Ecological Economics, Vol. 29(1): 63-74.[1][2][3]
  13. ^ Policy Analysts Ltd. RPA (2007), A review of recent developments in, and the practical use of, ecological footprinting methodologies: A research report completed for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [4]
  14. ^ F. Grazi, J.C.J.M. van den Bergh and P. Rietveld (2007). Welfare economics versus ecological footprint: modeling agglomeration, externalities and trade. Environmental and Resource Economics 38(1): 135-153.
  15. ^ [5]
  16. ^ Lenzen, M., C. Borgstrom Hansson and S. Bond (2006) On the bioproductivity and land-disturbance metrics of the Ecological Footprint. University of Sydney, ISA Research Paper, June, 06, in collaboration with WWF. Retrieved: 2007-06-04.
  17. ^ Loh, J., R. Green, T. Ricketts, J. Lamoreux, M. Jenkins, V. Kapos and J. Randers (2005) The Living Planet Index: using species population time series to track trends in biodiversity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 360, 289–295. Online edition published February, 2005. Retrieved on: August 4, 2007.
  18. ^ Lenzen, Manfred & Murray Shauna A. (2001), "A modified ecological footprint method and its application to Australia" (Ecological Economics 37 (2001) 229–255)

References

  • Rees, W. E. (1992) "Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: what urban economics leaves out," Environment and Urbanisation. 4(2), Oct. 1992. Available at Sage Journals Online [8]
  • Wackernagel, M. and W. Rees. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-86571-312-X.
  • Wackernagel, M. (1994), Ecological Footprint and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: A Tool for Planning Toward Sustainability. Ph.D. Thesis. School of Community and Regional Planning. The University of British Columbia.
  • WWF, Global Footprint Network, Zoological Society of London (2006) Living Planet Report 2006. WWF Gland, Switzerland. (downloadable in 11 languages via http://www.footprintnetwork.org/newsletters/gfn_blast_0610.html)
  • Lenzen, M. and Murray, S. A. 2003. 'The Ecological Footprint - Issues and Trends.' ISA Research Paper 01-03
  • Chambers, N., Simmons, C. and Wackernagel, M. (2000), Sharing Nature's Interest: Ecological Footprints as an Indicator of Sustainability. Earthscan, London ISBN 1-85383-739-3 (see also http://www.ecologicalfootprint.com)
  • J.C.J.M. van den Bergh and H. Verbruggen (1999), 'Spatial sustainability, trade and indicators: an evaluation of the ‘ecological footprint’,' Ecological Economics, Vol. 29(1): 63-74.
  • F. Grazi, J.C.J.M. van den Bergh and P. Rietveld (2007). Welfare economics versus ecological footprint: modeling agglomeration, externalities and trade. Environmental and Resource Economics, Vol. 38(1): 135-153.

External links

General

Calculators

N.B. See also Carbon footprint calculators and Water footprint calculators

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