Special Announcement
 
European Environment Agency Launches "The European Environment - State and Outlook 2005" - Global Ecological Limits a Central Theme
 
November 29, 2005
 
Today in Brussels the European Environment Agency (EEA) released its much awaited report The European Environment - State and Outlook 2005, featuring the Ecological Footprint, which shows that it takes 2.1 times the biological capacity of Europe to support Europe.
 

Jacqueline McGlade

"In formulating policy today, Europe ...has an obligation to look beyond ... its own borders," states Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director, European Environment Agency. "Europe cannot continue down the path of achieving its short-term objectives by impacting disproportionately on the rest of the world's environment through its Ecological Footprint."
 
 

Michael Meacher

EEA commissioned Global Footprint Network and its partners, Stockholm Environment Institute, New Economics Foundation and WWF International to prepare a special subreport on Europe's interaction with the global environment, which in turn informed the State and Outlook 2005 report. Michael Meacher, MP and former UK Minister of Environment, emphasizes the importance of this analysis, stating that "Understanding our ecological demand and its reach beyond national boundaries allows us to get prepared for the future. It is not that different from our financial expenditures. If we don't track them, we waste them; if we overdraw our 'ecological accounts,' we are undermining our future."
 
Europe's well-being and economic performance depend on healthy ecosystems. Europe's stewardship of its own lands has been relatively stable for the past 40 years, and the large rise in European consumption has been fed mainly by non-domestic resources. In 1961, Europe's consumption exceeded its own biocapacity by just a few per cent; by 2002, Europe was using more than twice its own biocapacity.
 

Georgina M. Mace

Georgina M. Mace, Director of Science, Zoological Society of London summarizes it this way: "In a global economy, wealthy urban centres get much of their supply from far away. They depend on ecosystems they have never seen. Hence, overused and failing ecosystems, even if distant, become a threat to the well-being of these very urban centres."
 
 
Europe (defined as the 25 EU countries plus Switzerland) is the largest economy in world history, and its consumption has never been greater. In her speech, Jacqueline McGlade said, "Europeans' consumption may be half of that of people living in the USA, but it is double that of people living in Brazil, India and China."

In 1961, the population of European nations made up over 12 percent of world population with a demand on global ecological capacity of just under 10 percent. By 2002, Europe's population comprised only 7 percent of the world total but its demand on global ecological capacity doubled, to nearly 20 percent.

What are the opportunities for Europe today? McGlade explained that "Many of our envrionmental problems are rooted in the way we use our land, the way we trade and the way we consume." The report lays out an economic policy framework for addressing these issues focusing on:

• shifting taxes away from labor and investment and toward pollution and the inefficient use of materials and land;
• economic reforms shifing subsidies that are applied to transport, housing and agriculture; and
• subsidies encouraging sustainable practices and efficienty technologies.

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker