In March, I wrote about how we can use the Ecological Footprint metric to calculate our personal impact on the Earth’s supply of natural resources. But the Ecological Footprint is a much more powerful tool than just a simple online quiz.
Governments and industries alike use the Ecological Footprint to determine how much productive land and water area they’re using up each year, and find areas in which they can reduce their impact. An Ecological Footprint analysis shapes policy decisions, determines a company’s best practices, and puts a number to the often-vague concept of “sustainability.” Sustainability goals, in turn, become more holistic and realistic—and we can track our progress to see how far we still have to go.
Industries
Industries can use the Ecological Footprint to analyze their resources and products and identify areas in which they can reduce their footprint. The Global Footprint Network has, for example, begun initial studies into the footprint of the Mediterranean tourism industry, and identified a couple of ways that travelers in the industry can lower their travel footprint: eating balanced portions of local foods, traveling at a slower pace, and using small-scale living arrangements instead of popular hotel chains.
Here’s another basic illustration:
A lumber company that harvests a section of a forest each year and fails to replant it would have an enormous Ecological Footprint. Likewise, another lumber company that participates in replanting efforts but continues to harvest more trees than the forest can replenish in the same amount of time would still have a large Ecological Footprint. In both cases, the forest will eventually run out of trees.
However, a company that harvests one section of forest, fully replants it, then harvests the next section (and so on and so forth) can reduce its Ecological Footprint by giving the replanted trees time to grow. Eventually, the company ends up in a cycle that balances the Earth’s ability to replenish the forest with the logging company’s demand on the forest. The forest never runs out of trees, and the company continues to produce lumber for decades.
In the end, industries can use the Ecological Footprint metric to ensure that their resources and products can continue to exist long into the future. By accounting for the resources an industry uses and tracking how long it takes to replenish them, that industry can figure out an optimal level of production that guarantees that their resources won’t eventually run out. This creates sustainability, in both the environmental and economic sense of the word.
Local and National Policy
When the Footprint method is applied to a specific city or country, it looks at how much productive land and water area that region needs to sustain its population, and compares that to how much productive area the region actually has. Cities like Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, have used their Ecological Footprint analysis to identify areas of improvement (such as public transportation access) and set specific sustainability goals for projects such as redeveloping their downtown area.
At the country level, the Global Footprint Network has been able to use data reaching back to 1961 to calculate the yearly Ecological Footprints of individual countries. This dataset gives countries a standard method of measuring their impact on the Earth, which they can use to identify problem areas and set specific goals for improvement.
Two key findings from the Global Footprint Network are that some countries overshoot their biocapacity because they simply use their resources faster than their own lands and waters can regenerate them, while other countries are “importing” resources from elsewhere, causing them to overshoot their own biocapacity. This makes sense for countries in arid regions, who may not have easy access to water or agricultural products within their own borders, or countries who consume large amounts of goods that were manufactured cheaply elsewhere.
If you’re curious, the Global Footprint Network’s dataset is available for public use here: data.footprintnetwork.org
The Sustainable Development Goals
“How can we all live well within the means of one planet?”
Mathis Wackernagel, TEDxSanFrancisco 2015.
Mathis Wackernagel, quoted above, and William Rees first came up with the idea of the Ecological Footprint as part of Wackernagel’s doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia. Both are involved in “community and regional planning,” or how we structure and develop our cities and states.
Sustainable development was defined by the United Nations in 1987 as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In 2015, the UN set Sustainable Development Goals in 17 key areas, hoping to address the development of both people and planet while reducing our impact on the Earth at the same time. To learn more about sustainable development and its importance, check out Sydney’s article on the topic.
In his TED Talk, Wackernagel argues that the Ecological Footprint helps to put concrete numbers to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, offering us a chance to accurately measure our progress towards meeting them—and, hopefully, achieve a more sustainable future for us all. To dive deeper into the idea of balancing our Ecological Footprint with human development, check out Wackernagel’s TED Talk here.
If you want to take action to reduce our Ecological Footprint beyond making changes in your personal life, consider investigating the footprint of your city or state. Have your local leaders implemented plans to reduce your community’s environmental impact? If not, try reaching out to your local officials to get the ball rolling towards a more sustainable future.
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