Wales has become the first country in the world to formally monitor and report on changes to its Ecological Footprint. In May it “weighed in” with a report, Wales’ Ecological Footprint – Scenarios to 2020, which shows how the country’s Footprint has grown in recent years, and identifies policies that could halt and even reverse the trend.
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Wales’ Ecological Footprint grew at a rate of about 1.5 percent a year between 1990 and 2003, according to the report, produced by Stockholm Environmental Institute – York and published by Wales’ Environment Minister Jane Davidson. If everyone on Earth used as much material resources and generated as much carbon emissions as the average person in Wales, it states, humanity would need another two planets.
Policies to encourage efficiency in areas of housing and use of energy; personal travel; and food consumption could enable Wales to curb its growing appetite for resources, reducing its Ecological Footprint by as much as 10 percent in the next 12 years. The report calls upon the government to work toward goals established in the ambitious One Planet Wales Campaign, by Global Footprint Network partner WWF Cymru, which sets a target of achieving a one-planet Footprint by 2050.
Wales has chosen the Ecological Footprint as one of five headline measures of progress towards sustainable development. It is currently engaged in a number of plans to limit its environmental impact, such as working to have all new buildings be carbon neutral by 2011 and striving to get all its energy from renewables from 2020. It has also set a recycling target of 70 percent of municipal waste by 2025.
Learn More:
Read the report (3,982 KB)
Learn more about how Wales is using the Footprint
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