If current population and consumption trends continue, Africa’s Ecological Footprint will exceed its biocapacity within the next twenty years, while a number of countries, including Senegal, Kenya and Tanzania, are set to reach that threshold in less than five years, according to a report issued today by Global Footprint Network and key partners.
The Africa Factbook 2009 reveals that while Africa’s population grew from 287 million to 902 million people between 1961 and 2005, the amount of biocapacity (food, fiber and timber resources that are renewably available) per person decreased by 67 percent during this same time period.
September 25 marked this year’s Earth Overshoot Day: the day global demand on ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing food, fiber and timber– outstripped what than nature can produce in this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. From now until the end of the year, we will meet our demand for ecological services by depleting resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“It’s a simple case of income versus expenditures,” said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel. “For years, our demand on nature has exceeded, by an increasingly greater margin, the budget of what nature can produce. The urgent threats we are seeing now – most notably climate change, but also biodiversity loss, shrinking forests, declining fisheries, soil erosion and freshwater stress – are all clear signs: Nature is running out of credit to extend.”
Global Footprint Network is pleased to announce the release of the Ecological Footprint Standards 2009. This document builds on the first set of internationally recognized Ecological Footprint Standards, released in 2006, and includes key updates – such as, for the first time, providing guidelines and standards for product and organizational Footprint assessments.
The Standards have been designed to ensure that Footprint analyses are produced consistently and according to community-proposed best practices. They aim to certify that assessments are conducted and communicated in a way that is accurate and transparent, by providing Standards and Guidelines on such issues as use of source data, derivation of conversion factors, establishment of study boundaries, and communication of findings. The Standards are applicable to all Footprint studies, including sub-national populations, products, and organizations. Global Footprint Network asks that all Partners comply with the most recent Ecological Footprint Standards, in order to promote the quality and integrity of Ecological Footprint Accounting.
During the year and a half since French President Nicolas Sarkozy established the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, it has focused on one challenge: How can we move beyond GDP to broader measures of a nation’s economic, social and environmental well-being?
Global Footprint Network applauds this effort and congratulates the Commission for taking a crucial step toward answering that question through its release of the Stiglitz Report. The report synthesizes the complex field of economic performance and social progress indicators and substantiates the voices of early pioneers like Hazel Henderson and Hermann Daly.
With this report, there is now wide agreement that humanity’s success in the 21st century depends largely on robust navigational tools. The report has built a productive platform for further discussions. However, there is still much work to do. The report points out that there is no consensus yet as to which indicators provide the greatest value, and how they should be applied in guiding public policy.
Global Footprint Network has launched the latest addition to its popular Ecological Footprint calculator with data specific to Switzerland. Click here to take the quiz.
Users walk an avatar through a Swiss countryside, answering questions about their consumption and lifestyle habits. At the end of the quiz they learn how much of the Earth’s resources it takes to support their lifestyle and what they can do to get closer to living within the means of our one planet. The Swiss version includes new, updated features to the Footprint calculator, including functionality in English .German, French and Italian languages.
The application was launched in partnership with WWF Switzerland as part of its campaign on environmental behavior, which for the past six years has featured the Ecological Footprint. This campaign has reached half a million people, and with the help of Global Footprint Network will now help the public understand their natural resource impact. According to WWF Switzerland, the calculator presents an attractive and illuminating tool that will engage people to optimize their every day behavior and reduce the Footprint. The Swiss calculator will be the first European dot on Global Footprint Network’s global calculator map.
For WWF Switzerland the footprint calculator is a valuable and attractive complementary tool that helps motivate people to participate in the various activities WWF Switzerland offers people to optimize their everyday behavior and reduce their Footprint.
Global Footprint Network is inviting corporate, government, and NGO partners to help expand the calculator to include additional features and locations. Please contact Meredith Stechbart, meredith@footprintnetwork.org, if you would like to be involved or would like the calculator customized for your organization.
Global Footprint Network will join hundreds of NGOs, businesses, government leaders and citizens at Climate Week NY˚C this September, calling on world leaders to secure an ambitious, fair and binding global deal in Copenhagen. Climate Week NY˚C is a series of high-level meetings, panel discussions, cultural events and public engagements to address and underscore the urgency for action on climate change.
Climate Week, which runs September 19 to 26, was born out of the recognition that, for one week in September, New York City will play host to important events seventy days prior to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen on December 7-18. These events include:
- UN Secretary-General’s day long summit on Climate Change
- Carbon Disclosure Projects’ 2009 report release
- Clinton Global Initiative
The weeklong series of events is a partnership between The Climate Group, United Nations, UN Foundation,City of New York, the tcktcktck campaign and Carbon Disclosure Project.
As part of the Climate Week program, Global Footprint Network’s Executive Director Mathis Wackernagel will present a lecture at New York University exploring the link between the Ecological Footprint and Climate Change, and how the Footprint framework can provide the strategic motive for government action. The lecture is free and open to the public. Click here for details.
As a measure of economic performance, GDP should be relegated to the “dustbin of history,” says Eric Zencey in a New York Times Op Ed. Among its liabilities, the indicator fails to place adequate value on ecological services, Zencey says, which are are less expensive than built capital services yet in the long term far more essential to human well-being (not to mention other species). Basing policy on GDP has caused us to pursue a perverse strategy of replacing the efficient and often free services offered by nature (such as sun-drying of clothes, propogation of fish and natural flood control) with resource- and cost-intensive industrial services (such as machine drying of clothes, fish farms, and levees and dams) that liquidate our natural wealth.
The Natural Step, an international non-profit dedicated to education, advisory work and research in sustainable development, has joined Global Footprint Network as a Partner. The Natural Step Framework provides a comprehensive, science-based definition of sustainability and links it to real world applications.
A recent issue of Ecological Economics (Vol. 68, Issue 7), the journal of the International Society of Ecological Economics, features a special section on Ecological Footprint analysis. Edited by Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel, the issue focuses on advancements in Footprint methodology and includes articles by Global Footprint Network research staff and partners. Aticles include a proposed method for incorporating methane into Ecological Footprint analysis, a comparison of Ecological Footprint and water footprint analysis, and a research agenda for improving the National Footprint Accounts. Click here to see a preview of the issue.
Costa Rica tops the list of countries able to provide long and happy lives for its citizens on a low Ecological Footprint, according to the Happy Planet Index, released this month by nef (the new economics foundation), a Global Footprint Network partner. Created as an alternative yardstick to economic-growth based measures of social progress, the Happy Planet Index (HPI) is designed to measure the ecological efficiency with which countries provide a high quality of life for their citizens.
Environmentalist Peter Seidel, who has authored two non-fiction books dealing with human demand on nature, takes a different approach for exploring the consequences of ecological consumption with a new novel out in paperback, 2045: A Vision of Our Future.
At recent workshops in Lima and Bogota, Global Footprint Network explored the implications of ecological limits and biocapacity for the global climate negotiations at Copenhagen and beyond. The workshops were part of multi-day seminars on climate change organized by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and sponsored by the British Foreign Commonwealth Office.
How can we move beyond measuring economic expansion to broader indicators of progress that assess whether countries are providing for human well-being in a meaningful and lasting way? This question is the focus of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress created by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and chaired by Nobel Prize winning-economists Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University and Professor Amartya Sen of Harvard.
With Earth Overshoot Day rapidly approaching, Global Footprint Network has launched a Twitter campaign to raise public awareness of ecological overshoot and encourage people to take action to end it. The campaign sends mini text and email messages, or “tweets,” with daily news, facts, suggestions and thought-provoking ideas. The campaign is designed to reach out to the nearly 14 million Twitter users, largely representing the under-35 demographic – the heirs to our current environmental policies and mounting ecological debt.
Click here to follow Global Footprint Network on Twitter.
What correlations are their between adult literacy and Ecological Footprint? Between population and energy use? The Trendalyzer tool, now available at the Global Footprint Network Web site, allows users to explore how various statistics relating to environmental impact (such as carbon emissions, energy use and Ecological Footprint), and quality of life (such as infant mortality, literacy, income and life expectancy) interact and inter-relate. Users are able to chose from dozens of publically-available data sets and chart how those factors relate to one another over time and geographic realms.
Data on resource limits will be the critical intelligence for the 21st century, Mathis and Susan say in a Global X interview sponsored by the Skoll World Forum. The two discuss why they launched Global Footprint Network. “Our work is so much data driven, and yet it’s so much about life,” Susan says. “And it’s not about future generations anymore. It’s about my life, our son’s life,” Mathis reflects.
The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress — created by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and chaired by Nobel Prize winning-economist Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University – has recently issued a report with recommendations on how to find a more comprehensive approach toward gauging a country’s success, beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Among the indicators mentioned was the Ecological Footprint, marking an important milestone. Global Footprint Network praises its members for this valuable work and confirms their call for more biophysical indicators. Please join us in sending comments on the report and its findings, and recommending that the Ecological Footprint be a part of a micro-dashboard of economic performance and social progress indicators, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) here.
Global Footprint Network has launched versions of its Web site in German, French, and Spanish, with versions in Portuguese and Italian version to go live this month, and plans to add Japanese and Arabic by the end of the year. Users simply go to the language bar at the top of the home page and select the version they wish to view.
CNN’s Josh Levs observed Earth Day by taking Global Footprint Network’s Ecological Footprint quiz on national television. “This is one of the best features that we discovered this week on Earth Day,” he says, as he walks viewers through the quiz, answering questions and determining how many planets it takes to support his lifestyle. (Answer: 4.8)
The past year has been a challenging one for the world, filled with environmental news such as soaring food prices and climate change impacts that reflect the growing human and economic costs of overshoot. But it has also been a year in which the global community has truly begun to mobilize to meet our ecological challenges. Read about the work Global Footprint Network is doing on almost every continent to take advantage of this critical moment and push the shift toward a sustainable world economy.
The world’s economic powers are engaged in a new wave of outsourcing – one that poses a stark distinction with that of manufacturing in the 1980s, and information technology in the 1990s, according to a recent report in The Economist (“Buying Farmland Abroad: Outsourcing’s Third Wave,” May 23, 2009). Concerned by recent world food shortages, rich governments are buying up tracks of land in foreign (mostly low-income) countries to ensure continued access to food and other vital agricultural resources.
Global Footprint Network has launched the latest addition to its popular Ecological Footprint calculator with data specific to Calgary, Canada. Click here to take the quiz.
State of the Art in Ecological Footprint Theory and Applications
Footprint Forum: The Opportunity of Limits. Colle Val d’Elsa, 7-11 June 2010
Global Footprint Network is calling for abstracts for presentation at Footprint Forum: The Opportunity of Limits to be held June 7-11, 2010, in Colle di Val d’Elsa, Italy, just outside of Siena, Italy. Submissions are welcome on a range of issues and disciplines related to the Ecological Footprint (i.e., carbon, trade, and biodiversity and water). Nine abstracts will be selected in total – three to be presented at each of the Forum’s three 75-minute sessions. If your abstract is selected, you will have the opportunity to speak at the session for up to 15 minutes, followed by at least 10 minutes of discussion. In addition, a special issue of Ecological Indicators will include extended versions of a selection of papers presented at Footprint Forum.
About Footprint Forum:
As our financial systems and our relationship with the natural world are being re-examined, our work at Global Footprint Network grows increasingly crucial. Now, more than ever, there is a need for innovative, breakthrough ideas – and our upcoming Forum will be designed to stimulate just that. Members of our partner network, selected thought leaders and influencers will gather from around the world to participate in this intimate and interactive event held in Colle di Val d’Elsa. Together, they will learn, share and create solutions as they tackle the most pressing issues humanity is facing, and take action toward creating a world where we can all live within the means of our planet.
Details of Submission:
Proposed topics should focus on NEW developments on the Ecological Footprint in areas of:
1. Theory;
2. Applications; or
3. Communication/policy relevance.
All submissions must be a two-page abstract, and include an introduction, summary of methods and results, and a discussion section. Click here to download the template. Click here to download the abstract submission format and guidelines
Note: If your abstract is not selected, you will have the option of having it presented as a poster at the Forum.
Global Footprint Network is pleased to announce two sessions it will lead at the Sustainable Brands 2009 Conference in Monterey, Calif., May 31-June 4.
On June 4th, Global Footprint Network CEO Susan Burns will lead a special workshop on the topic Future-proof Your Business: Understanding Business Strategy in the Face of Ecological Limits. The workshop will help business leaders prepare for the key resource challenges humanity will face in the coming years, and uncover ideas and opportunities for pioneering the way toward a resource-efficient future. The discussion marks the first of our Global Footprint Dialogues, which will bring together leading thinkers and change-makers to foster the innovation we will need to end ecological overshoot.
On Monday, June 1st, 12:15 - 12:30 pm, Global Footprint Network Executive Director Mathis Wackernagel will speak on the subject: Thinking Beyond Carbon; Understanding Carrying Capacity and the Full Ecological Footprint of Business.
The Sustainable Brands Conference is the premier place for business strategists, product designers and brand executives to stay on the cutting edge of the discussion about sustainability as a driver of business opportunity and brand value. Both the program and the faculty serving this year’s conference are simply outstanding. I urge you and your team to consider joining me in Monterey to fuel your strategic thinking as well as strengthen your company’s sustainable design and brand communications skills.
Click here to check out the stellar list of speakers.
Click here to see the Conference Program.
Click here to see who will be attending.
Dr. Wackernagel will speak about the Ecological Footprint, what it tells us and why it is more important now than ever. The current economic downturn has brought home the consequences of living beyond our financial means. But we are also living beyond our ecological means, and the time is upon us to take stock of our ecological balance sheet and right the books on our use of nature. Learn how the Ecological Footprint is helping to spark the systemic shifts and breakthrough thinking we will need for a sustainable human future.
The lecture is free to attend. Details are as follows.
Monday, 18 May 2009
17:30 Welcome by Christophe Bouvier, Director, UNEP Reigonal Office for Europe
17:35 Lecture by Mathis Wackernagel, Co-Creator of the Ecological Footprint and Executive Director, Global Footprint Network
18:30 Questions and Discussion
19:00 Reception
Where: International Environment House II
11-13 chemin des Anémones, CH-1210
Châtelaine, Geneva, Switzerland
Recent headlines such as “A Measure Remodeled” (Financial Times) and “Time to Order a New Economic Order” (the Huffington Post) reflect a growing call to reform GDP, our standard measure of economic performance. On Huffington Post, a popular political news Web site, an article read: “Most, if not all, ministers of finance and conventional economists don’t account for how the planet works, or even that the economy exists on a finite planet.”
In a world in which the traditional ways of valuing investments have proven less-than-reliable in recent months, Swiss investment firm Pictet Asset Management is gaining traction with a new type of bond fund: one which rates countries based on their ability to provide a high quality of life at a minimal ecological cost.
Africa: Ecological Footprint Factbook 2009, released in February, was the latest result of that ongoing initiative. The 20-page report features three countries: Egypt, Tanzania and Zambia, and includes Ecological Footprint and biocapacity trends, as well as guest perspectives on each country’s environmental issues and challenges.
On the shores of Zambia’s Lake Bangweulu, 26 young women stooped by the water with an assortment of gadgets, learning how take measurements of pH, depth, visibility, current and temperature. One student lowered a rope with a brick on the end and used it to gauge depth. Another used a clear, flat instrument called a secchi disk to measure visibility, while a third navigated the position of each data point using a GPS.
Kicking off an initiative that could redefine how we value and negotiate resources in the 21st century, key policy experts and opinion leaders met April 10 in Lima, Peru, for the first workshop of Global Footprint Network’s Ecological Creditor Initiative. World Bank representatives, policy experts and opinion leaders met with representatives from Global Footprint Network and the Community of Andean Nations to begin a series of workshops on the growing significance of biocapacity and its potential for competitive advantage in a resource-constrained world.
The Ecological Footprint Standards Committee is inviting public comment on its proposed 2009 Ecological Footprint Standards. The standards are designed to ensure that Ecological Footprint assessments are produced consistently and according to community-proposed best-practices. These new methodological standards focus on Ecological Footprint studies for organizations and products. They were created over the past six months by the Ecological Footprint Standards Committee and the Standards Working Group.
Global Footprint Network has been named a Phoenix 50 organization, one of “50 pioneers in the business of social innovation” that can enable humanity to emerge from the economic crisis with a society better adapted to our global challenges.
The crisis of 2008 represents something deeper than economic recession, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says in a March 7 column. Economically and ecologically, we are hitting the wall.
A front page article in the New York Times this week discusses how Gulf states are making a major push to be leaders of alternative energy. The article states that Abu Dhabi, a state of the United Arab Emirates, plans to invest $15 billion renewable energy – the same amount President-elect Obama has proposed investing in the entire United States.
It may seem strange that an oil-rich country like the United Arab Emirates – known for its energy-intensive lifestyle – should be a standard bearer for renewable fuels. But the UAE’s leaders have shown a far-sightedness in understanding the risks of their resource reliance. Yes, the United Arab Emirates narrowly surpasses the United States as having the world’s largest per capita Ecological Footprint.. But rather than being fearful and getting dismissive about their resource dependency, the UAE’s leaders have addressed this danger, through initiatives like its national Ecological Footprint Initiative (Al Basama Al Beeiya), with which it has been working with Global Footprint Network since 2007.
Such thinking is also driving the investment in alternative resources. Oil may have built the country’s wealth. But the only way to preserve it may be to lead the world on solar.
A Sustainable Investment Firm’s Response to the Financial Crisis
Environmental concerns tend to take a back seat in tough economic times. But at least one asset management firm is taking exactly the opposite tack – stressing that now, more than ever, sound investing means adequately valuing the underlying natural assets upon which all our economic systems depend.
“So far, the economic crisis we are facing has been explained by financial leverage,” said Carsten Henningsen, co-founder of the global sustainability fund Portfolio 21. “However, there is a direct link between the financial crisis and the ecological crisis. To the extent that ecological limits place limits on the growth rates of earnings, stock prices will fall.”
The Ecological Footprint as a sustainability indicator adds an important dimension to GDP, and should have equal weight in guiding policy. Such is the conclusion of a committee convened by the European Commission to research policy instruments that could support more balanced decision-making than GDP alone.
There is no resource more critical to life on the planet than water – yet as a result of human activity, we find it as so many other vital reserves to be in increasingly short supply. With drought and water pollution deepening concerns, the Living Planet Report 2008 (released recently by Global Footprint Network, WWF and Zoological Society of London) adopted a new index to measure human demand on water: the water footprint, developed by University of Twente, Netherlands, Professor Arjen Hoekstra.
After completing a thorough, two-year review and update to the methodology for calculating national Footprints, Global Footprint Network has published three resources supporting the 2008 Edition of the National Footprint Accounts. They present comprehensive results, provide a step-by-step guide to the equations and calculations, and offer complete transparency of the source data.
Global Footprint Network has completed an extensive Web site redesign, with improved navigation, more interactive features, updated visuals and clearer, more concise language. The site is organized into five key sections. About Us, Footprint Basics (general Footprint explanations, data and the work we do in various sectors), Footprint Science (detailed information on accounts, research and methodology), Partnerships, and Resources (our newsroom, personal calculator and downloadable copies of all of our reports.)
We have also launched a version of the site in German, and will be adding additional languages in the early part of next year.
An engine of economic activity in China, Hong Kong is also a major center of resource consumption in the country, according to a study released this month by Global Footprint Network and WWF.
At 4.4 global hectares per person, Hong Kong residents have an Ecological Footprint twice that typical for China as a whole. Hong Kong also has one of the greatest ecological deficits in the world, according to Hong Kong Ecological Footprint Report: Living Beyond Our Means. The report details Hong Kong’s resource use and its role in the overall ecological picture of China – a country that now ties the U.S. as the largest user of the world’s biocapacity.
At the current rate humanity is using natural resources and producing waste, by the mid-2030s we will require the resources of two planets to meet our demands, according to figures released today by Global Footprint Network. The data comes at a critical time, as the economic crisis felt around the globe has made it painstakingly clear: Debt and overspending can continue for a while but ultimately have dire consequences.
As the world grapples with the escalating effects of the financial crisis, Global Footprint Network reported on another mounting – and unsecured – debt: a growing gap in India between the amount of natural resources the country uses and how much it has.
On September 23rd this year we mark an unfortunate milestone: As of today, humanity will have consumed all the new resources the planet will produce this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. For the rest of 2008, we will be in the ecological equivalent of deficit depending, drawing down our resource stocks – in essence, borrowing from the future.
China’s Ecological Footprint has quadrupled in the last four decades, with the country now demanding more from the planet than any nation except the United States, according to a report released last month by Global Footprint Network, WWF China, and CCICED (China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development), a Chinese government advisory group.
In the last 50 years, China has soared from being one of the more moderate consumers of the planet’s resources to one of the largest, according to the Report on Ecological Footprint in China, presented on June 10, 2008 in Beijing. The report’s findings underscore the crucial role China will play in addressing the major resource challenges humanity faces in the 21st century.
While Africans per capita consume very little of the world’s biological resources, Africa’s growing population is bringing the region close to reaching it’s ecological limits, according to a groundbreaking report that Global Footprint Network, in conjunction with WWF, presented on June 9, 2008 at the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment in Johannesburg.
Offering the first in-depth look at the Ecological Footprint of Africa and its constituent countries, Africa: Ecological Footprint and Human Wellbeing examines the role natural resources can play in advancing the region’s goals to end poverty and disease – or conversely, if mismanaged, in thwarting these goals. The report is the result of a multi-year effort by Global Footprint Network and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to explore how ecological limits apply and relate to human development in the region.
If everyone lived like you, how many Earths would it take to support your lifestyle? This Earth Day, Global Footprint Network is pleased to announce a new video and Footprint Calculator for the U.S., two tools to help Americans see how their living habits relate to their use of the planet’s resources.
A One Planet Life
What is your Ecological Footprint?
What can you do to get closer to living within the means of one planet? We’ve built this Ecological Footprint calculator to help you find out. Built in partnership with Free Range Studios (creators of the viral film the Meatrix and The Story of Stuff), the calculator is the latest phase of Global Footprint Network’s rollout of a global calculator that will provide people around the world with an interactive, informative tool for exploring and reducing their Footprints. An Australia calculator was launched in March, and a Canadian version is planned for later this year.
Global Footprint Network is inviting corporate, government, and NGO partners to help launch the calculator world-wide. The calculator can be customized for specific organizations and geographical areas. Please contact Susan Burns if you would like to be involved or would like the calculator customized for your organization.
As the second fastest-growing Canadian city with a population that has grown 13 percent in five years, Calgary finds itself at a critical moment. City leaders are faced with making infrastructure and planning decisions that will shape the way residents live for years to come and are looking to balance the needs of citizens with a growing concern about the city’s use of natural resources. The government has launched an Ecological Footprint project with Global Footprint Network that will help officials understand the ecological impacts of these decisions – and move in a direction that provides the most ecologically sustainable future for its citizens.
“Humanity is brushing up against ecological limits”, “natural resources are dwindling”, “unsustainable consumption increases” – whatever the chosen term or headline, the fact is that the concept of overshoot has gotten a lot of media attention recently. The past few months have seen stories in The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journalamong others, all reflecting a growing awareness that carbon is only part of the overshoot story.
What does the word “footprint” mean? Today, it’s likely to refer less to the tread mark your sneaker leaves in the dirt, and more to the imprint you’ll leave on the planet. So says word maven William Safire in a recent “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine. In the February 17 column, Safire traces the word’s journey from its literal meaning to the metaphoric significance it has gained in recent years as a measure of environmental impact.
In Deep Economy, renowned environmental journalist and climate activist Bill McKibben has done more than simply write a catchy page-turner; he has created a blueprint for bringing humanity out of overshoot. McKibben weaves evidence of our ecological crisis (including Footprint data) with explorations of the history and psychology of our growth-based economy and “hyper-individualist” culture. Clearly but gently, he shows how global economic expansion has become our culture’s mantra, yet is simply not an option if humans are to survive this era of global overshoot.
Click here to download Global Footprint Network’s 2007 Annual Report. The past year has been one of growth for both our organization and for the Footprint’s influence in the world. Our Annual Report expresses hope and progress towards ending overshoot, with great strides in our Ten-in-Ten campaign, our work with Human Development in Africa, India and China, and Footprinting for local governments. It also celebrates a diversity of Footprint successes from our partner organizations and maps out our plans for an even more impactful 2008.
Since our inception in 2004, Global Footprint Network has invited organizations with shared goals to partner with us in strengthening the Footprint and enhancing its value as a catalyst for sustainability. We began with just 12 founding partners and have expanded to well over 80 organizations with the common vision of ending overshoot.
Hear Mathis Wackernagel discuss how the Ecological Footprint helps inform sustainable development and which countries are winning the game on this Living on Earth interview.
Help us communicate about ecological overshoot by submitting a 2-3 minute video to our Ecological Debt Video Contest. Winners receive cash prizes, Footprint DVDs, and more!
The Charles University Environment Center, a Global Footprint Network partner, is organizing a ConAccount international conference entitled “Urban metabolism: measuring the ecological city”. The conference, which will include a section on measuring the Ecological Footprint of cities, will take place in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic on 11-12 September 2008. The organizers have announced a call for abstracts, due on 15 March. For more information on the event, see the conference website.
Global Footprint Network partner WWF Cymru has launched an ambitious ‘One Planet Wales’ Campaign to move Welsh citizens towards high quality, low Footprint lives – with the goal of living within the means of one planet by 2050. Central to the campaign is the recently released One Planet Wales report, authored by WWF Cymru and the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology, University of Manchester. The report outlines the path forward to reach the 75% reduction in Wales’ Ecological Footprint that will be required to meet the 2050 target.
Discovery Communications is launching a new 24/7 eco-lifestyle television channel, “Planet Green”, with an original 10-part series, WA$TED, that features the Ecological Footprint of average Americans.
Radiohead, a well-known British rock-band, recently commissioned Global Footprint Network partner Best Foot Forward (BFF) to analyze the band’s Footprint and help reduce their tour’s carbon emissions. BFF’s report shows that transport, how fans get to Radiohead’s shows, is the most important lever for reducing the tour’s Footprint.
Mathis Wackernagel talks about Ecological Debt Day, how to slow our appetite for resources, and what we can do to better manage our natural assets on Earth & Sky Radio. Listen here.
This fall our Executive Director, Mathis Wackernagel, received an Honorary Doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Bern in Switzerland for “developing and promoting the internationally recognized method of the Ecological Footprint; for authoring numerous scientific and popular media contributions to the topic of ecological carrying capacity and sustainability; and for being an inexhaustible Footprint spokesperson on all continents and founder of the Global Footprint Network and bringing together scientists and politicians.” Wackernagel was the youngest recipient and accepted his honorary PhD at an awards Ceremony in Bern last month.
A new report released by Global Footprint Network and WWF Canada reveals that while Canada is endowed with abundant natural resources, it also has the 4th highest Ecological Footprint per person of all nations. According to the Canadian Living Planet Report 2007, if everyone consumed like Canadians we would need 4.3 Earths to support us.
Global Footprint Network and the Ecological Footprint recently played a prominent role at Clima Latino, the largest conference on climate change ever held in Latin America. Hosted by the Community of Andean Nations (Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia), the Republic of Ecuador, and the Ecuadorian cities of Quito and Guayaquil, the conference was attended by 1550 participants from 40 countries. Held consecutively in the two cities from 15-18 October, 2007, Global Footprint Network was represented by its Senior Scientist Steve Goldfinger, who gave a well-received plenary presentation and helped lead two workshops.
GDP is the most recognized indicator in the world, but a country’s high GDP does not always mean that its people are doing well. This is the reason that over 500 high-level economic, social and environmental experts met at the historic Beyond GDP International Conference in Brussels in late November. The European Commission, European Parliament, Club of Rome, OECD and WWF hosted this high-level conference with the objectives of clarifying which indices are most appropriate to measure progress, and how these can best be integrated into the decision-making process and taken up by public debate. The Ecological Footprint was featured as a central alternative to the GDP at the conference, most notably in a keynote address by WWF’s President and former minister of Nigeria, Emeka Anyaoku.
The Scottish Government announced this November that it will use the Ecological Footprint as one of its performance measures as part of its innovative National Performance Framework. The Framework provides a unified vision and quantifiable benchmarks against which the government’s priorities are measured.
One of Scottland’s goals is to “... reduce the local and global environmental impact of our consumption and production “and to ‘reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050’. The Local Footprints Project, a Global Footprint Network partner, has just issued a consumption based analysis of Scotland’s Carbon Footprint, based on its 32 local authorities.
Global Footprint Network is pleased to announce the launch of a new research collaboration with the United Arab Emirates. The collaboration involves multiple stakeholders across the nation working together to improve the UAE’s National Footprint Accounts data and apply Ecological Footprint analysis to national policy in order to create a resource-conscious and resource-efficient nation.
A recent UNEP report states that many of the major threats to the planet, such as climate change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population, remain unresolved and are putting humanity at risk. The Division of Early Warning and Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme released this information and more in their “UN GEO4 report,” the Global Environmental Outlook 2007.
Don’t miss The Story of Stuff! It’s a new online video that explores the full life cycle of what we buy and the political-economic history of conspicuous consumption. It is smart, fast and fact-filled, informative and positive, and a great tool for raising awareness about ecological limits. The 20 minute film was produced by Free Range Studios and funded by the Tides Foundation and the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. You can watch it online at www.storyofstuff.com.
Global Footprint Network Partners Ecolife and WWF Belgium have collaborated with a Flemish TV Station to create a giant Footprint on the Belgian beach of Zeebrugge.
Telling a complex story in an interesting way is challenging. Leonardo Di Caprio and Al Gore did it. And so can you! The recent documentaries about environmental degradation, the depletion of resources, and climate change showed the power of video to help people to understand scientific concepts.
A recent feature on population in the Economist discusses economic challenges when a nation’s population falls. In this feature, “How to deal with a falling population”, 28 July 2007, the Economist tries to minimize concerns about world population by saying that we are “hardly near the point of [resource] exhaustion”.
The Economist received a flood of letters insisting that rising world population and resource depletion are indeed serious problems. So many comments were sent in that the Economist published a follow-up piece, Population and its discontents: Lighten the footprint but keep the feet. This too highlighted deep misunderstandings about the relationship between population and humanity’s demand on our biosphere, and in particular, confusing population growth rates and population size.
There is one complex term to describe our future: limited biocapacity. The earth’s limited biocapacity is the greatest challenge we face as investors and as humans. We are already facing it, but the severity of its effects depends on where you live and how much money you have.
The planet provides some amazing ecosystem services for our economy. It recycles our polluted air and dirty water; it provides timber, cropland, and many other raw materials and support services. When I was born in 1960, the ecological footprint of the world economy consumed about half of the earth’s resource capacity. In other words, our 1960 world economy consumed less than what the earth was able to renew, recycle, or produce as ecosystem services. Twenty five years later the ecological footprint of the world economy doubled. In 1985, we hit the threshold of using everything the planet could renew, recycle, or produce each year. If the ecological footprint of our world economy had stayed at this level, society’s demand on nature would be in balance with nature’s capacity to meet that demand-assuming we had transitioned from oil to renewable energy. But that’s not what happened.
We are thrilled to welcome our new partner the Center for a New American Dream. The Center has long had a major influence in North America, helping people to examine consumerism, live better lives and make a difference. Author Bill McKibbin recently said: “The Center for a New American Dream has hit on just the right mission and just the right tone: we can live happier lives, and when we do our communities, human and natural, will prosper as a result.”
Global Footprint Network is excited to have a new partner so experienced with connecting with the American public to add value to our partner community.
Saturday, October 6 marked Ecological Debt Day - the day when humanity has consumed all the resources the planet will produce this year.
Ecological Debt Day highlights the fact that humanity is living off its ecological credit card. Just as spending more money than you have in the bank leads to financial debt, ecological overshoot, or using more resources than the planet can renew in a year, accumulates an ecological debt. This can go on for a short time, but ultimately it leads to a build up of waste and the depletion of the very resources on which the human economy depends.
The Utah Population and Environment Coalition (UPEC) spearheaded the first effort to calculate the Ecological Footprint of a US state. The report, Utah Vital Signs 2007: the Ecological Footprint of Utah finds that Utah’s Footprint is greater than its biocapacity. Between 1990 and 2003, Utah went from an ecological surplus of 10.8 million global hectares (gha) to an ecological deficit of 2.4 million gha; Utahns are now using 11% more regenerative capacity than is available in their state. Despite this evidence of local ecological overshoot, public response to the study has been mostly positive, says Sandra McIntyre, the project director. “As we take the results of the study into the community, we are pleased to see how many people in Utah are making changes in their lifestyles to become more sustainable.”
Global Footprint Network is thrilled to have BioRegional Development Group join us as one of our newest sponsoring partners. Bioregional develops innovative low-Footprint, locally-based commercial products such as hemp textiles and builds communities that are designed to help residents move toward a “one planet lifestyle.” These One Planet Living Communities, such as the UK’s BedZed eco-village, are paving the way for a transformation in how housing is developed around the world.
To kick off our partnership, Global Footprint Network provided BioRegional staff with an intensive 2-day technical training that will help them use the Ecological Footprint to analyze the performance of their One Planet Living Communities.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, Artist Chris Jordan‘s photos speak volumes. In Jordan’s own words, the photographs portray “contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics.”
Many of the images portray a specific quantity of something Americans consume: 8 million toothpicks, representing the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs; 106,000 aluminum cans, reflecting “thirty seconds of can consumption,” according to Jordan. The image above, for example, is a portion of Jordan’s image of 426,000 cell phones, which he says is “equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.”
This series will be exhibited at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, opening Sep 8. More info at www.paulkopeikingallery.com.
Carbon dioxide is emitted whenever human activities involve the burning of fossil fuels. This waste will accumulate in the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change, unless it can be captured and stored by plants. The carbon Footprint therefore measures the demand on biocapacity that results from burning fossil fuels in terms of the amount of forest area required to sequester these carbon dioxide emissions. Note that this does not suggest planting forests is the ‘solution’ to climate change; on the contrary, it shows that the biosphere does not have sufficient capacity to sequester all the carbon we are currently emitting.
Global Footprint Network’s founders, Susan Burns and Mathis Wackernagel, traveled to the Skoll World Forum this March to receive the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Skoll awardees are tackling some of the world’s most pressing social problems with creative and innovative approaches. Susan and Mathis returned from the forum thoroughly inspired.
If you would like to be inspired too, Watch Uncommon Heroes. Common Good, and hear the stories of this year’s award winners.
The Premier of South Australia, Hon Mike Rann has sought to bring ‘Ecological Footprint’ thinking to the core of decision-making, by including the Ecological Footprint as a key sustainability indicator in South Australia’s Strategic Plan. The Plan establishes a target to reduce South Australia’s Ecological Footprint by 30% by 2050.
The 2007 edition of the plan also seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050. Greenhouse gas emissions make up more than half of South Australia’s Ecological Footprint and the aggressive reduction target has been approved by the legislature.
The report calculates that if everyone in the world consumed natural resources and generated carbon dioxide at the rate of Scotlanders, we would need three planets to support us. It concludes that Scotland needs to reduce its Footprint by 75% by 2050 in order to live within the planet’s resources, and that this cut can be achieved through more efficient products and better, less wasteful, consumption.
About Us