Ecological footprint

An ecological footprint is the amount of land and water area a person or a human population would need to provide the resources required to sustainably support itself and to absorb its wastes, given prevailing technology. The term was first coined in 1996 by Canadian ecologist William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel (a graduate student working with Rees at the University of British Columbia at the time).

Footprinting is now widely used around the globe as an indicator of environmental sustainability. It can be used to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy. It is commonly used to explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organisations, industry sectors, regions and nations.

Ecological footprint analysis

Ecological footprint analysis approximates the amount of ecologically productive land and sea area it takes to sustain a population, manufacture a product, or undertake certain activities, by accounting the use of energy, food, water, building material and other consumables.

It is a way of determining relative consumption for the purpose of educating people about their resource use and, sometimes, triggering them to change how they consume. It can be combined with overpopulation concerns and stated as "the number of Earths it would take to support every human living exactly the way you do.". Ecological footprints have been used to argue that current lifestyles are not sustainable. A number of NGO websites allow you to estimate your ecological footprint (see Footprint Calculator, below).

Changing consumption patterns

One of the less-publicized but most powerful insights of ecological footprint methods is that, contrary to many people's assumptions, it is human use of renewable resources, not of non-renewable ones, that poses the real sustainability crisis. Nature can restore renewable resources at a certain rate. Humans consistently and increasingly consume renewables faster than ecosystems can restore them.

This state of excessive ecological burden eventually threatens those very ecosystems by not allowing them sufficient time to "recharge." Furthermore, humans can clearly live without nonrenewable resources such as metals or fossil fuels, as we have done in the not-so-distant past. It is the renewable resource base on which we and all species depend. The ecological footprint approach can introduce the concept of resource recharge and the rate at which we use resources as key elements in more sustainable human societies. This time element helps us understand that it's not just what we use, or even how much, but how fast, and over what period of time. This meshes with other movements to "slow down" human consumption and help people disengage from that acceleration of actions and expectations that has been a crucial feature of industrial societies.

Criticisms

Calculated footprints can be inaccurate due to simplifying assumptions. Many factors of the calculations are based on crude estimates and the numbers may not be applicable to all places (the method is biased to Northern Hemisphere lifestyles). Also, the model generally does not count multiple uses of land: a forest is a carbon sink and the same area is not counted for food production.

The per-person nature of footprinting is questionable. For example, the model favors households with more children: A large house with ten children has a smaller per-person footprint than a house half its size with only one person. This is a perverse result, since having more children adds to global overpopulation, with high ecological costs in the future.

To counter these uncertainties, the models of ecological footprinting are constantly being refined.

References

Wackernagel, M. and W. Rees. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. ISBN 086571312X
Chambers, N., Simmons, C. and Wackernagel, M. 2000. Sharing Nature's Interest: ecological footprints as an indicator of sustainability. Earthscan, London ISBN 1853837393 (see also http://www.ecologicalfootprint.com)

External links

General

Global Footprint Network Ecological Footprint : Overview
WWF "Living Planet Report", a biannual calculation of national and global footprints
Best Foot Forward Ecological Footprint experts
Ecological Footprint Analysis, Footprint of Nations etc
The Earth Charter Initiative
Big Picture TV Free video clip of Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of ecological footprint analysis
Ecological Footprint Cartogram
Footprint Trust

Calculators

Calculate your carbon footprint and then reduce it
Redefining Progress - Earth Day footprint quiz
Eco'tude - for Australian schools
Ecocal - for UK households
MfE (NZ) - for New Zealand households

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