Global Footprint Network

The Global Footprint Network (GFN) is a non-profit organization in the environmental sector. It operates as an international think tank , using the Ecological Footprint , an accounting system for natural resources, to drive informed policy decisions. GFN works with regional and national governments, investors and opinion leaders to ensure that all people can live well within the earth's available resources.

GFN is headquartered in the USA ( Oakland , California ), an office in Brussels (where the EU is based) and one in Geneva (where many international organizations are based).

Every year GFN calculates and publishes the day on which the world's annual resources are used up. She called this day Earth Overshoot Day . GFN was founded in 2003 by Mathis Wackernagel and Susan Burns .

job

The ecological footprint is a system of indicators that quantifies how many resources are available to mankind and how many they are consuming. “Nature's account statements” provide information on which population groups (e.g. all residents of Germany) use how many resources for which activities. With the Ecological Footprint method, GFN has set a worldwide standard for measuring global resources. GFN has over a hundred partner organizations, such as WWF , Bank Sarasin and the British expert commission New Economics Foundation . Global Footprint Network also works with individuals, organizations, cities, countries, industrial companies and non-governmental organizations.

target

The goal of GFN is to create a sustainable world in which all people can be given a dignified life within the natural capacity of our earth. GFN uses the Ecological Footprint to keep accounts of the human consumption of natural resources and the actual stock. With these facts GFN would like to open a worldwide dialogue about the promotion of sustainable development . GFN wants people to pay as much attention to natural resources as they do to the price trend, for example. Long-term economic development can only be ensured by taking into account and including natural capacity. GFN also addresses architects, town planners, politicians and economists. GFN provides the Ecological Footprint as a scientifically based measurement method to bring about social change. In 2012 and 2013, Global Footprint Network was named one of the world's 100 best NGOs by the Global Journal .

Publications (selection)

• Mathis Wackernagel; Bert Beyers: The Ecological Footprint. Measure the world anew.
  • European Publishing House, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-931705-32-9
  • CEP European Publishing House; New edition 2016 with current figures, ISBN 978-3863930745
• WWF (2012): Living Planet Report 2014 ( online (PDF, 52 S., 5 MB))
• Bert Beyers, Barbara Kus, Thora Amend, Andrea Fleischhauer: Big foot on small earth? . Balance with the ecological footprint. Volume 10 of the series "Sustainability has many faces". Second, slightly changed edition 2010.
• Case studies for national, regional and local governments

Web links

• Website (English)
• Calculating your own footprint
• Footprint of the states of the world
• www.footprint-deutschland.de
• www.oekofuss.de ( BUNDjugend website )

• Teaching material: Ecological footprint in school

Individual evidence

1. ↑ At a glance ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Green Environment Network ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Basics introduction ( memento of the original from September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ what we do ( memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Footprint basics overview ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Long English version: 180 pp., 33 MB (October 2014)
7. ↑ Case stories