Mathis Wackernagel

Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy

Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human demand on the environment into the area required for the production of food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the biospheres regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanitys load corresponded to 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in 1999.

National natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept

Abstract There is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital. However, progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow, not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable. Therefore, to overcome this obstacle, assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed. This study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting. It demonstrates, using the example of Italy, an accounting framework which tracks national economies’ energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows. This calculation has been applied to over 52 countries. With this framework, based on the ecological footprint concept, human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level, using existing data.

Urban ecological footprints: Why cities cannot be sustainable—And why they are a key to sustainability

It is sometimes said that the industrial revolution stimulated the greatest human migration in history. This migration swept first through Australia, Europe, and North America and is still in the process of transforming Asia and the rest of the world. We refer, of course, to the mass movement of people from farms and rural villages to cities everywhere. The seeming abandonment of the countryside is creating an urban world—75% or more of the people in so-called industrialized countries now live in towns and cities, and half of humanity will be city dwellers by the end of the century. Although usually seen as an economic or demographic phenomenon, urbanization also represents a human ecological transformation. Understanding the dramatic shift in human spatial and material relationships with the rest of nature is a key to sustainability. Our primary purpose, therefore, is to describe a novel approach to assessing the ecological role of cities and to estimate the scale of the impact they are having on the ecosphere. The analysis shows, that as nodes of energy and material consumption, cities are causally linked to accelerating global ecological decline and are not by themselves sustainable. At the same time, cities and their inhabitants can play a major role in helping to achieve global sustainability.

Perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital: Economics from an ecological footprint perspective

This paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality, far from encouraging investment in natural capital, actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks. Moreover, conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem. This paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows, and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept. To develop the argument, the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses. It shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital, and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital. It picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective: it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities; how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation; how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability; and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput. Affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles, it draws lessons for current development.

Sharing nature's interest : ecological footprints as an indicator of sustainability

Introduction * Redefining Progress * Indicating Progress * Footprinting Foundations * Footprinting Fundamentals * From Activities to Impacts * Twenty Questions About Ecological Footprinting * Global and National Footprints * Regional Footprinting * Assessing the Impact of Organizations and Services * Footprinting for Product Assessment * Footprinting Lifestyles - How Big is Your Ecological Garden? * Next Steps * Annexe 1 - A Primer on Thermodynamics * Conversion Tables * Glossary * Index

The ecological footprint from a systems perspective of sustainability

Summary The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a method for estimating the biologically productive area necessary to support current consumption patterns, given prevailing technical and economic processes. By comparing human impact with the planets limited bioproductive area. this method tests a basic ecological condition for sustainability. The ecological footprint has gained popularity for its pedagogical strength as it expresses the results of its analysis in spatial units that can easily be communicated. Many EF estimates have been performed on a global, national and sulrnationallevel. In this paper. we review the method and critically assess it from a sustainability perspective based on first order principles. We examine: • Which aspects of sustainability are already covered by existing EF assessments; • Which further aspects ofsustainability could be made accountable through the EF (such as areas needed to assimilate waste streams that are not yet accounted for in present assessments); and • Those aspect...

The Ecological Footprint: An Indicator of Progress toward Regional Sustainability

We define regional sustainability as the continuous support of human quality of life within a regions ecological carrying capacity. To achieve regional sustainability, one must first assess the current situation. That is, indicators of status and progress are required. The ecological footprint is an area-based indicator which quantifies the intensity of human resource use and waste discharge activity in relation to a regions ecological carrying capacity. If the ecological footprint of a human population is greater than the area which it occupies, the population must be doing at least one of the following: receiving resources from elsewhere, disposing of some of its waste outside of the area, or depleting the areas natural capital stocks. To achieve global sustainability, the sum of all regional footprints must not exceed the total area of the biosphere. This paper explains the mechanics of a footprint calculation method for nations and regions. As the method is standardized, the relative ecological load imposed by nations and regions can be compared. Further, a nations or regions consumption can be contrasted with its local ecological production, providing an indicator of potential vulnerability and contribution to ecological decline.

Shrink and share: humanity's present and future Ecological Footprint

Sustainability is the possibility of all people living rewarding lives within the means of nature. Despite ample recognition of the importance of achieving sustainable development, exemplified by the Rio Declaration of 1992 and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, the global economy fails to meet the most fundamental minimum condition for sustainability—that human demand for ecosystem goods and services remains within the biospheres total capacity. In 2002, humanity operated in a state of overshoot, demanding over 20% more biological capacity than the Earths ecosystems could regenerate in that year. Using the Ecological Footprint as an accounting tool, we propose and discuss three possible global scenarios for the future of human demand and ecosystem supply. Bringing humanity out of overshoot and onto a potentially sustainable path will require managing the consumption of food, fibre and energy, and maintaining or increasing the productivity of natural and agricultural ecosystems.

Footprints for Sustainability: The Next Steps

The concept of an ecological footprint is based on the understanding that every individual human appropriates a share of the productive and assimilative capacity of the biosphere. An ecological footprint corresponds to this exclusive biologically productive area that a defined population uses for all its resource requirements and wastes, and is expressed in terms of bioproductive space, with world-average productivity. Humanitys footprint or its aggregate ecological demand can only temporarily exceed the productive and assimilative capacity of the biosphere without liquidating and weakening the natural capital on which humanity depends fundamentally. Therefore, accounting tools for quantifying humanitys use of nature are essential for overall assessments of human impact as well as for planning specific steps towards a sustainable future.This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the ecological footprint as an ecological accounting method, points out research needs for improvement of the analysis, and suggests potential new applications. The paper identifies ten new applications of the tool to make it applicable at various geographic scales and for a number of analytical and didactic purposes. Then nine methodological improvements are suggested that could refine the currently applied method, making assessments more sensitive to a larger number of ecological impacts. It concludes that many crucial questions pertinent to building a sustainable society can be addressed by current ecological footprint research. By making the method more complete, this tool could evolve from being largely of pedagogical use to become a strategic tool for policy analysis.

The ecological footprint of Santiago de Chile

Abstract In the case of Santiago de Chile, this paper explains how the ecological footprint of a city can be calculated and how this footprint can be compared with the biological capacity available for human use. As ecological footprints provide an easily communicable way of measuring the ecological bottom‐line condition for sustainability, it is a useful tool for promoting a sustainable future. It is particularly useful for cities, as it is in cities where the battle for sustainability will be won or lost. While cities are the largest contributors to Gross World Product, they are also the largest consumers and waste producers. This is particularly critical in a world that is already overloaded with human activities and, in addition, is rapidly urbanizing. To make cities win the battle for sustainability we must understand the economics of cities, not just in monetary terms, but in terms of resource allocation. Human activities depend on the provision of resources, the absorption of waste and other essent...