Module 2 Intro

Increasingly, we are coming to realise that we are using up more resources than nature can replace and producing far more waste than nature can safely absorb. So, it is sometimes said that the human Ecological Footprint is too large.

 

The term comes from Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth written by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees in 1996.

 

This book presents calculations which show that the human population requires at least 20% more biologically productive land than we presently have—and that we would need a total of three planet Earths to support us if all the Earth's inhabitants were to live at the standard as people in countries such as the United States of America, Australia or Canada.

 

For example, the Ecological Footprint of the USA was 9.6 hectares (24 acres) in 1999. This is about the area of 24 football fields. In comparison, the average Canadian lived on a footprint about one quarter smaller (7.2 hectares/18 acres), while the average German required an area less than half the size (4.4 hectares/11 acres).

 

These 'footprints' are greatly in excess of the ‘fair share’ area of 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres) per person there would be if all the biologically productive land and sea in the world were divided equally by the total number of people in the world.

However, humans are not the only inhabitants of the Earth. So, the figure of 2.1 hectares does not allow any space for the ‘footprint’ needs of other species. If preserving the 10 million other species on Earth requires at least 12% of the biologically productive land on Earth (as recommended by the World Commision on Environment and Development calculation), the available biologically-productive space would shrink from 2.1 to 1.8 hectares per person.

 

We can calculate if there is enough land for our needs by multiplying the figure of 1.8 hectares per person by the total number of people in the world, and comparing the result with the biologically productive land available. Unfortunately, this shows that we are exceeding the Earth's capacity by 20%.

In other words, we are consuming more than what nature can regenerate and, therefore, are eating up the Earth’s stock of natural capital. Scientists call this situation ‘overshoot’ and say that the amount of land 'borrowed' from the future is really an ‘ecological deficit’.

 

Many countries greatly exceed the footprint of 1.8 hectares per person. Thus, the footprint overshoot in the USA, for example, is causing an 80% ‘ecological deficit’. This means that they—and the people from many other countries—are ‘borrowing’ resources from the future and from elsewhere in the world without ever being able to pay back the debt.

According to the Living Planet Report for 2000, published by WWF, the international conservation organisaton, ‘If every human alive today consumed natural resources and emitted carbon dioxide at the same rate as the average American, German or Frenchman . . . we would need at least another two Earths’.

 

Using Ecological Footprint calculations, the report argues that:

 

The area needed to produce the natural resources consumed and absorb the carbon dioxide emitted by the average North American is almost twice the area required by the average Western European, and some five times greater than required by the average Asian, African and Latin American.

It is the consumers of the rich nations of the temperate northern regions of the world who are primarily responsible for the ongoing loss of natural wealth in the tropics.