ECOLOGICAL

FOOTPRINTS
INDEX
CONTENT

PAGE NUMBER

Introduction
History
Advantages
Disadvantages
Methods
Ecological Footprints by Nations
Critique
Steps we can take

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4-5
5-6
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6-9
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INTRODUCTION:
The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems, the
amount of natural capital used each year. The footprint of a region can be contrasted with the
natural resources it generates.
A common type of footprint estimates the amount of biologically productive land and sea
area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate the
waste that population produces. At a global scale, this has been used by some ecological
analysts to estimate how rapidly we are depleting limited resources, vs. using renewable
resources. The Global Footprint Network, for instance, is an ecological organization that
calculates a global ecological footprint from UN and other data, and publishes the result.
They estimate that as of 2007, the planet uses up major ecological resources 1.5 times as fast
as they are being renewed.
An Ecological Footprint can also be defined as a measure of the amount of bioproductive
land and sea required to support a persons lifestyle. It includes the land needed to grow their
food, dispose of their waste and absorb their carbon emissions. The footprint counts all the
impacts of personal spending as well as the business and government expenditure on their
behalf.
The Ecological Footprint also can be said as a resource accounting tool that measures how
much biologically productive land and sea is used by a given population or activity, and
compares this to how much land and sea is available. Productive land and sea areas support
human demands for food, fibre, timber, energy, and space for infrastructure. These areas also
absorb the waste products from the human economy. The Ecological Footprint measures the
sum of these areas, wherever they physically occur on the planet. The Ecological Footprint is
used widely as a management and communication tool by governments, businesses,
educational institutions, and non-governmental organizations.

HISTORY:
The analytical tool known as 'Ecological Footprints' (EF) was developed by Dr Mathis
Wackernagel and Prof William Rees. EF is not only a conceptual tool which helps to
understand how different human activities have different 'loads' - footprints - on the
supportive environment; it is also a very practical tool for measuring human impact on the
Earth's resource base.
William Rees has been teaching the basic concepts of EF analysis since the 1970's, and it has
been further developed by Mathis Wackernagel and other students working with Mr Rees at
University of British Columbia's Healthy and Sustainable Communities Task Force. Mr
Wackernagel and Mr Rees published the book Our Ecological Footprint - Reducing Human

Impact on the Earth in 1996, and the concept has after that been firmly established in the
discourse on sustainable development, ecological economics and urban studies.

ADVANTAGES:
Today it is important for people to become familiar with the idea of Ecological Footprint. Its
a method of accounting utilized by business, governments as well as educational institutions
to measure the biological sustainability of the earth based on the activities of people and their
growing populations.
It has been designed to gauge the quantity of the biologically productive sea and land areas
that a sector of a human population needs in order to sustain themselves and the level of
carbon dioxide emission absorbed. This is then measured against the amount of land and sea
available to meet these needs in the area where a human population is located.
Land and sea that has been designated as biologically productive must be designed to meet a
human populations need for food, energy resources, wood products, space for construction
and more. The land and sea must also absorb the carbon dioxide emissions created by people
who sustain themselves in the measured area. These areas are farmed fields, places where
fishing takes place and more. The expanse of the ocean, deserts and glaciers are not
designated as biologically productive.
In order to measure the footprint of a specific area, calculators have been designed for this
specific task. It will measure an individuals ecological footprint by calculating all the
biological materials consumed and waste created by that individual during a twelve month
period. This number is then converted into a biocapacity measuring unit called the hectare,
which can be converted into a global hectares based on yield and other factors. The total of
global hectares required to maintain resource levels and waste production of an individual
equals their footprint.
This footprint has been designed to show the level of natural resources being consumed by
the human population of the planet. Early indications on information gathered indicates that
human society is going to have to alter the way it consumes natural resources if current and
future human population levels are to be maintained. It can show the impact of human
societies on specific areas of the planet. These results can motivate those in charge to seek
new and different ways to conserve and protect the worlds natural resources.
It is an accepted fact that recycling reduces an individuals footprint by decreasing the
demand for products made from natural resources, and decreases the need for the earth to
absorb waste. When plastics are recycled their impact on landfills in lowered. Recycling
paper decreases the need for trees to be harvested from the forest. Many different forms of
successful recycling significantly lowers the footprint of humanity on the earth.
When using footprint calculator its important to remember that its only as good as the
accuracy of its source data. These calculations are also affected by the methods utilized and
calculation limitations. There are organizations actively working on developing an even more
accurate calculation method than the ones currently being used.
Knowing and understanding the idea of Ecological Footprint is important for every person
living on the earth. Its a way to know when natural resources are being depleted at a
disturbing rate. This makes societies aware that changes must be made to accommodate their
needs and those of the planet.
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One of the main advantages of ecological footprint is the qualitative research undertaken to
highlight worst affected geographical areas and the preparation of actionable plans to deal
with them. The footprint provides accurate figures so there is no option for under doing or
overdoing improvements. Correct redressal plans and timely implementation will lead to
effective utilization of remaining resources and reduce ecological footprint. The ecological
footprint analysis helps to gain a standardized indicator and create solutions around it.
The necessity of application, the advantages nowadays - and more and more in the future can be supported with the following too:

critical areas can be identified with the calculation and analysis of ecological
footprint, actions can be well founded,

from the investigation of the ecological footprint's different "elements" and from the
timeline (e.g. annual calculation) it can be easily identified what are the necessary
management measures with which the environment protection and sustainability can
be supported,

the calculation of ecological footprint, as a sustainability indicator is a strong, tangible

and recognized activity of the corporate social responsibility (CSR),

the sustainability approach - the most important element of which is that the economy
also works in an environment which has limited resources - is perfectly demonstrated
by the ecological footprint, strengthens it amongst the employees and towards the
stakeholders of the company,

the GRI guidelines helping the preparation of sustainability reports do not require the
calculation and presentation of ecological footprint on an explicit way, but it can be
perfectly applied within the frameworks of the GRI; it might be acknowledged when
the reports are certified,

on a mid- term it is possible - based on Western European initiatives - that those

companies who calculate and analyse their ecological or carbon footprint might get
some advantage on EU and state grant applications.

DISADVANTAGES:
However, on the other hand, it does have its disadvantage too. It is not feasible to calculate
ecological damage on a larger scale as it leads to wrong analysis. In other words, a country
with high population will be seen as consuming higher resources which could be over
estimation. Moreover, ecological footprint does not consider imports and exports.
Secondly, it is not necessary that damage to the environment is caused only due to resource
consumption. Other factors like carbon emission are there too. Take the examples of China
and Hong Kong. The ecological footprint of China is low because even though their
contribution to carbon emission is very high. However, internationally, the ecological
footprint of Hong Kong is marginal even though they have high population level but their
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consumption of natural resources is standard. They have different schemes helping to curb
overuse of sustainable resources.
The ecological footprint is one indication of unsustainability. Because of the limitations
below, we can say that "x is unsustainable because it's ecological footprint exceeds the fair
share" but we cannot say "x is sustainable because it fits within the fair share"; we would then
need to account for pollution, water use, toxicity, health, happiness, and so on.
Eco-footprints don't account for:
o Any economic, political or cultural factors such as well-being;
o 78% of the surface of the earth, which is deemed to lack any biocapacity (deep
oceans, deserts, mountains);
o Water and waste, except insofar as they affect the biocapacity of a region and so show
up by those proxies;
o Non-renewable resources and their depletion, only renewable resources in the
biosphere. The exceptions are where they affect the biosphere, for example pollution
from mineral mining reducing the biocapacity of a fishery;
o Biodiversity, toxicity, pollution and other traditional environmental concerns;
o Unsustainable management of the biosphere, for example clear-cutting a rainforest for
agriculture would seem to increase biocapacity because the yield factor of cropland is
higher than that of forestry;
o Related to the above point, destruction of biocapacity by long-term processes such as
climate change;
o The true use and exchange value of different land types, for example forestry doesn't
include the pharmaceutical potential of the species that live there;
o Methane and other greenhouse gases, only carbon dioxide;
The accuracy of any given footprint analysis is also constrained by the quality of the data.
The granularity of most data is very low, and the error margins quite high, so in general
footprints are deemed to have an error margin of around 20-30%. Whilst the UK has
exceptionally good data on the input/output economic flows, breaking it down into over 160
categories, for most countries it's around 40 categories making translations from industry to
materials very rough-and-ready.
The assumptions behind the data are also problematic. For example, there is data for a variety
of different kinds of cropland in the UK, but this still misses regional variations, the crops we
might need to fulfil dietary requirements, and the crops we need to meet a reasonable demand
profile for a wider area including exports to the continent. Imagine Japan, which is
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completely dependent upon imports of most raw industrial materials, and one can see how a
footprint might mislead us into thinking Japan is totally unsustainable even if the trade
relations with surrounding countries is in fact genuinely sustainable.
Because of these limitations, ecological footprinting should be used as one tool amongst
many. It is excellent at providing an overview of global, national and regional resource use,
producing headline figures. Life cycle analysis can help us analyse products and practices in
considerable detail. But it would be misleading to make apparently scientific claims about
reductions in the ecological footprint for those products and practices

METHODS:
The ecological footprint accounting method at the national level is described in the l
Footprint Atlas 2010 or in greater detail in the Calculation Methodology for the National
Footprint Accounts. The National Accounts Review Committee has also published a research
agenda on how the method will be improved.
In 2003, Jason Venetoulis, Carl Mas, Christopher Gaudet, Dahlia Chazan, and John Talberth
developed Footprint 2, which offers a series of theoretical and methodological improvements
to the standard footprint approach. The four primary improvements were that they included
the entire surface of the Earth in biocapacity estimates, allocated space for other (i.e., nonhuman) species, updated the basis of equivalence factors from agricultural land to net primary
productivity (NPP), and refined the carbon component of the footprint based on the latest
global carbon models

ECOLOGICAL FOOTBRINT BY NATIONS:

CRITIQUE:
Early criticism was published by van den Bergh and Verbruggen in 1999, which was updated
in 2014. Another criticism was published in 2008. A more complete review commissioned by
the Directorate-General for the Environment (European Commission) was published in June
2008. A number of countries have engaged in research collaborations to test the validity of
the method. This includes Switzerland, Germany, United Arab Emirates, and Belgium.
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. They find that the two methods can lead to very distinct, and
even opposite, rankings of different spatial patterns of economic activity. However this
should not be surprising, since the two methods address different research questions.
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 the Footprint denies the benefits of trade. Therefore, the critics
argue that the Footprint can only be applied globally.
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
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conventional methods, this could result in the former being "penalized" with a larger
ecological footprint. 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 Footprint calculations with
the Living Planet Index of biodiversity. Manfred Lenzen and Shauna Murray have created a
modified Ecological Footprint that takes biodiversity into account for use in Australia.
Although the ecological footprint model prior to 2008 treated nuclear power in the same
manner as coal power, the actual real world effects of the two are radically different. A life
cycle analysis centered on the Swedish Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant estimated carbon
dioxide emissions at 3.10 g/kWh]and 5.05 g/kWh in 2002 for the Torness Nuclear Power
Station. This compares to 11 g/kWh for hydroelectric power, 950 g/kWh for installed coal,
900 g/kWh for oil and 600 g/kWh for natural gas generation in the United States in
1999. Figures released by Mark Hertsgaard, however, show that because of the delays in
building nuclear plants and the costs involved, investments in energy efficiency and
renewable energies have seven times the return on investment of investments in nuclear
energy.

The Swedish utility Vattenfall did a study of full life cycle emissions of Nuclear, Hydro,
Coal, Gas, Solar Cell, Peat and Wind which the utility uses to produce electricity. The net
result of the study was that nuclear power produced 3.3 grams of carbon dioxide per KW-Hr
of produced power. This compares to 400 for natural gas and 700 for coal (according to this
study). The study also concluded that nuclear power produced the smallest amount of CO2 of
any of their electricity sources.

Claims exist that the problems of nuclear waste do not come anywhere close to approaching
the problems of fossil fuel waste. A 2004 article from the BBC states: "The World Health
Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution
annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid
fuel. In the U.S. alone, fossil fuel waste kills 20,000 people each year. A coal power plant
releases 100 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant of the same wattage. It is
estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much radioactivity into the
atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident. In addition, fossil fuel waste causes global
warming, which leads to increased deaths from hurricanes, flooding, and other weather
events. The World Nuclear Association provides a comparison of deaths due to accidents
among different forms of energy production. In their comparison, deaths per TW-yr of
electricity produced (in UK and USA) from 1970 to 1992 are quoted as 885 for hydropower,
342 for coal, 85 for natural gas, and 8 for nuclear.

Our worldwide environmental rallying cry has become, "Think Globally, Act Locally". In
this lesson and others we have explored and discussed how our individual actions at home
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can have global consequences. If we desire to improve the environmental quality and equity
of our planet, each of us should consider reducing our ecological footprints.

STEPS WE CAN TAKE:

Reducing our Footprints
Footprints are the result of many individual choices as well as the activities and policies of
government, corporations, and civic institutions. There are numerous ways we can reduce
our footprint, improve our quality of life, and influence policy so that future generations
have the same opportunities to enjoy rich and rewarding lives.
Individuals
When we take action and commit to reduce our own
footprint, we can inspire and engage others to do the same.
Take action
The most effective actions individuals can take involve
changing energy use associated with transportation and
powering our home, as well as purchasing socially and
environmentally responsible products. We have teamed
with New American Dream to identify 10 personal actions we
can take to protect the planet. Learn more at Turn the Tide: 10
Actions for the Planet.
Inspire others
While lifestyle changes can reduce the size of an individual's Ecological Footprint, the
Footprint also can inspire others and help society build sustainable ways of life for all. To
achieve sustainability, we have to ask difficult questions about how we want to live and use
the resources of this planet. Answering these questions as a society means sharing our
concerns with friends and neighbors, and with leaders of government and business.
Engage friends
Start a conversation by asking others about their social and ecological concerns. Encourage
people to take the Ecological Footprint Quiz, and then compare our results. Get involved
with global and local movements for social change, or start our own movement.
Involve community leaders
Invite business and political leaders to track resource use in communities, organizations,
and nations. Encourage our schools to teach students about the Ecological Footprint. Use
the Ecological Footprint to ask for accountability so we can encourage what works for the
planet and discourage damaging activities.

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Communities and City Officials

Cities and regions can reduce their Ecological Footprints and enhance sustainability by
working together toward positive change.
Measure the community's Footprint
Ask a local elected official or member of the environmental or planning commission to
have Redefining Progress calculate the city's footprint. We'll identify the biggest
components of the city's footprint and help develop policies that will reduce the footprint's
size.
Analyze environmental and economic impacts
Team up with a local organization that has the resources and influence to get the job done.
Community members and city officials can request an analysis of the environmental and
economic impacts of alternative land use scenarios using the footprint and economic
indicators. Redefining Progress conducts these analyses for cities, counties, and regions.
Plan mixed-use neighborhoods
Support mixed use developmenthigh-density housing with nearby public transportation,
stores, schools, offices, and entertainmentto minimize sprawl and the need to drive. The
key is to support government policies that provide jobs that match local residents' needs, so
they don't have to commute out of town for work.
Construct green buildings
Environmentally friendly construction materials and energy-efficient designs can have an
enormous effect on society's use of natural resources. Zoning regulations can mandate or
provide incentives for low-footprint buildings and building materials. Cities can mandate
that certain proportions of their power must come from renewable energy sources.
Buy locally grown foods
Food items travel an average of 1,300 miles. Establish a farmer's market or frequent an
existing market to improve access to local, organic produce and reduce the transportation
footprint of food. Find a farmers market near us.
Advocate for public transportation
Better public transit and bike lanes can reduce our need for car transportation. The Surface
Transportation Policy Project is a nationwide coalition working to ensure smarter
transportation choices that improve public health, promote social equity, and protect the
environment. Local communities can learn about transportation alternatives and join the
project to advocate for more sustainable transportation.
Protect green spaces
Support urban gardens, plant trees, and protect open space. Healthy soil filters rainwater,
maintains a healthy water cycle, and replenishes groundwater supplies. Protect existing
ecologically productive areas such as surrounding wildlands and local farms.

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Implement natural waste treatment systems

Encourage developers to integrate natural waste treatment systems, such as wetlands, into
sewage treatment methods. This both maintains the water and nutrient flow of the
ecosystem and minimizes the Ecological Footprint (and cost) of traditional sewage
treatment facilities.
Businesses
As institutions with enormous influence on the use of the planet's resources, businesses are
key to making sustainability work. Assume a leadership role by using Ecological
Footprints to:
Communicate clearly
The Ecological Footprint is a tool for communicating clearly about the complex topic of
sustainability, both within organizations and with the general public. For example, the
Footprint offers a much-needed complement to conventional indicators on the state of
nations, such as the Gross Domestic Product.
Evaluate risks
Decision-makers can use the Ecological Footprint to estimate more comprehensively the
ecological implicationsand potential economic and social strainsof various courses of
action. For example, the Footprint provides a framework for measuring the wide range of
material and energy inputs required to maintain a given industrial process or build a
particular structure.
Set specific, observable goals
Leaders can develop specific, observable goals for an organization or community using the
Ecological Footprint as a framework. The Footprint helps ensure internal and external
accountability, guiding business and government to design products and policies that
prepare for a sustainable world.
Test policy options
The Ecological Footprint allows businesses to explore the implications of policy options. It
provides policymakers with a common analytical platform to compare the consequences of
various material and energy use scenarios, and to test sustainability strategies.
Redefining Progress can calculate Ecological Footprints for businesses. For more
information, see our Indicators Analysis and Economic services for clients.
Schools and Campuses
Calculate our school or college campus' Ecological Footprint as part of a course project.
Identify the components that have been the largest footprint contributors over time and
show student groups, facilities, and staff how they can reduce their footprint. See more
resources for Footprint Education in our section For Educators.

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A hunk of beef raised on Scottish moorland has a very different ecological footprint
from one created in an intensive feedlot using concentrated cereal feed, and a wild venison or
rabbit casserole is arguably greener than a vegetable curry.

-Tristram Stuart

SOURCES:

Wikipedia the free encyclopedia-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint

http://ecocentricdesign.ca/earth-day/
http://rprogress.org/ecological_footprint/reducing_your_footprint.htm
http://rprogress.org/ecological_footprint/footprint_FAQs.htm
http://www.wikihow.com/Have-a-Smaller-Ecological-Footprint

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