Pre-Reading
For the Footprint Policy Seminar Pre-Reading, click here.
Download the Technical Training Pre-Reading.
“Tracking Trends in the Mediterranean Region”Global Footprint Network, Oakland, Calif., USA
What are the specific ecological trends at play in the Mediterranean Region, and what do they tell us about the region’s future? “Tracking the Ecological Trends Shaping the Future of the Mediterranean Region” looks to bring the reality of resource constrains to the center of the Mediterranean policy debate, and to support decision-makers with specific tools that help them weigh policy trade-offs. Such analysis will enable policy analysts and decision-makers to more fully identify the risks that resource limitations pose to their countries’ economic stability. It should also help them pinpoint the opportunities that lie in aggressive, timely efforts to reduce their overall resource dependence.
“Prosperity Without Growth? - The transition to a sustainable economy,”Sustainable Development Commission, United Kingdom
“Prosperity Without Growth?” suggests that the current global recession should be the occasion to forge a new economic system equipped to avoid the shocks and negative impacts associated with our reliance on growth. Ahead of the G20 Summit in London, the report calls on leaders to adopt a 12-step plan to make the transition to a fair, sustainable, low-carbon economy.
“Vision 2050: The new agenda for business,” World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Switzerland
The Vision 2050 study lays out a pathway leading to a global population of some 9 billion people living well, within the resource limits of the planet by 2050. The report released at the World CEO Forum in New Delhi, India, was compiled by 29 leading global companies representing 14 industries.Twenty-nine companies, led by Alcoa, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Storebrand and Syngenta, have come together to rethink the roles that business must play over the next few decades to enable society to move toward being sustainable. This endeavor has resulted in a call to action that aims to encourage companies to reinvent themselves, their products and services to get where they and society want to be.
Ecological Wealth of Nations: Earth’s biocapacity as a new framework for international cooperation, Global Footprint Network
This report documents the demand that humanity is putting on the Earth’s ecological assets, and the capacity of ecosystems to keep up with this demand, both globally and by individual nation. The analysis is primarily based on statistical information that countries report to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), the UN Development Program (UNDP) and other international organizations.In a world that is confronting simultaneous limits on food, water, soil, energy, climate and biodiversity, this perspective brings current ecological realities into sharper focus. In particular, it can help gauge whether proposed solutions will result in an absolute reduction in humanity’s ecological overshoot, or will just transfer pressure from one stressed ecosystem to another.
What You Need to Know about Peak Oil, by Robert Rapier
Apocalypse. The end of the world as we know it. A return to the Dark Ages. Those are some of the scarier phrases used to describe the upcoming peak in global oil production, commonly known as simply “Peak Oil.” Peak Oil refers to the point at which new oil production can no longer keep up with declining oil fields, and this results in a yearly decline in the amount of oil produced. Since the world has become increasingly dependent upon petroleum year after year, declining petroleum production has the potential to severely disrupt our lives through much higher prices and fuel shortages. Discussions of Peak Oil really began to enter the mainstream in 2005. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett gave a speech about Peak Oil on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. After Hurricane Katrina caused oil and gasoline prices to spike people began to ask serious questions about our oil supplies. The issue began to receive more attention from the mainstream media.4This essay will discuss the history of Peak Oil discussions, the potential ramifications from a peak in oil production, the influences of the supply/demand imbalance, and finally what you need to do to prepare for Peak Oil.
The theoretical and political framing of the population factor in development, Martha Campbell, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Since the 1990s, a silence on population has reverberated around the world. The media tell us of looming grain shortages, sinking water tables, shrinking energy supplies, over-fishing and loss of forests, but in neither academic articles nor news descriptions does one hear that a population factor is involved. At the same time, it is virtually impossible for countries with rapidly growing populations, where greater numbers of children are born each year, to keep up with their growing needs for healthcare and education. This paper describes the complex links between a biological perspective of human reproduction, cultural and religious opposition to women’s decision-making around childbearing, the current theoretical explanations of fertility decline, the political framing of population by women’s health advocates at the time of Cairo, evidence of the many barriers to fertility regulation, and the importance of opportunity for women to be free of the unnecessary barriers.