Relevance Of Measuring Ecological Footprint In Today’s Time

There is a famous saying by Donella Meadows (or John Muir) which says that the motto should “not be blind opposition to progress, but rather an opposition to blind progress”. In today’s world, with rapid environmental degradation, depletion of natural resources and unfettered over-consumerism, it becomes important to quantify and calculate ecological footprint on an individual, local and national level, so countries can improve sustainability and well-being, local leaders can optimize public project investments and individuals can understand their impact on the planet.

Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand and supply of nature. On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures the ecological assets that a given population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes (including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions. The Ecological Footprint tracks the use of six categories of productive surface areas: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, forest area, and carbon demand on land. On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s biocapacity represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land). These areas, especially if left unharvested, can also absorb much of the waste we generate, especially our carbon emissions.

Both the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity are expressed in global hectares—globally comparable, standardized hectares with world average productivity. Each city, state or nation’s Ecological Footprint can be compared to its biocapacity. If a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s biocapacity, that region runs an ecological deficit. Its demand for the goods and services that its land and seas can provide—fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton for clothing, and carbon dioxide absorption—exceeds what the region’s ecosystems can renew. A region in ecological deficit meets the demand by importing, liquidating its own ecological assets (such as overfishing), and/or emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If a region’s biocapacity exceeds its Ecological Footprint, it has an ecological reserve.

The Ecological footprint of different countries, and whether the country is a biocapacity creditor or biocapacity debtor can be seen below-

India’s ecological footprint and biocapacity from 1961 to 2013 is given below-

The top 10 countries with the highest ecological footprint in the world are given below-

With a world-average biocapacity of 1.73 global hectares per person (99.2 billion in total), this leads to an ecological deficit of 1.1 global hectares per person (7.8 billion in total).

Another important determinant of the ecological footprint is Earth Overshoot Day. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with their Earth Overshoot Day campaign, which attracts media attention around the world. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate. Earth Overshoot Day has moved from late September in 2000 to August 2 in 2017.

Under a business-as-usual path, human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems is projected to exceed what nature can regenerate by about 75 percent by 2020. We must begin to make ecological limits central to our decision-making and use human ingenuity to find new ways to live well, within the Earth’s bounds. This means investing in technology and infrastructure that will allow us to operate in a resource-constrained world. It means taking individual action and creating the public demand for businesses and policymakers to participate.

As seen from the above image, if carbon emissions go on with business as usual in the current scenario, the Earth Overshoot Day in 2030 will fall on June 28th, while if the carbon emissions reduced 30%, Earth Overshoot Day would fall on September 16th in 2030.

The country earth overshoot days indicate what the Earth Overshoot Day would be if the world population lived like the population of different countries. Luxembourg with its high ecological footprint has an Earth Overshoot Day on 17th Feb, while Honduras has its Earth Overshoot on 31st December. This means, that if the world population lived like the population of Luxembourg, it would use up all of Earth’s resources for that year as early as 17th February, while if the world population lived like the population of Honduras, the Earth’s resources would sustain for the entire year.

Therefore to prevent the ultimate ‘tragedy of the commons’, with the commons being our over-exploited Earth, it is necessary to be aware of our own ecological footprint and provide insight into how exactly we are impacting our planet, so there can be more awareness for ecologically friendly behaviour, and provision of incentives for better policies crafted towards sustainable development.

Anurit Kanti

BW Reporters The author is correspondent at BW Businessworld, he has a keen interest in sustainability and environmental economics