Recorded at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, JohannesburgSeptember, 2002

SOURCE: Big Picture TV

The Ecological Footprint is a very simple tool to tell us how much nature we have and how much we use. If we divide the planet's ecological capacity by the world’s population what we get is around two hectares per person. We can then compare that surface area with the area necessary for us to produce food, fibers, to absorb CO2 and to host our infrastructure.

When we add it up for the United States, for example, it comes to roughly 9 to 10 hectares of ecological capacity to provide for an average American. That means that if everyone lived like an American, it would take about six planets. But we only have one! And some of it we should leave for other species.

Worldwide we already use 20% more than that which nature can regenerate every year. This means that every year, we use what nature takes one year and about two and a bit more months to regenerate. So overall, we can say that we have run into ecological debt.

The Footprint helps us to preserve our ecological assets. It helps us keep our books, to make sure that what we spend ecologically does not exceed what we earn. But now our books are not balanced and any company that doesn't have its books in order will go bankrupt over time. Without books for our ecological resources we will continue to spend more than what we get from nature, thereby liquidating our assets. We need to protect our assets. That's at the core of sustainability. The ecological footprint helps us to do that.

A huge part of our resources are spent in cities. The way we build our cities determines how much we'll use cars or public transportation, how big the houses are, how well they are insulated. A lot of it is organized through local planning and the way we set our standards in cities. That's a big opportunity for cities because cities also spend a lot on building their infrastructure, so at the same time that we can make our cities much more ecologically effective we can also reap some of the benefits locally again.

The Ecological Footprint can be a very useful tool to monitor whether we actually move in the right direction, because it helps us to analyze or to summarize how we draw on nature in a simple comprehensive format. Similar to the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product that helps us to find out how much money is changing hands in the economy - very useful in order to look at the health of an economy - we also need to look at the ecological footprint to look at the health of the ecosystem services that support our economy. That we can do not only at the national level or the global level, we can also do it at the city level or even at the individual level. When cities start to measure their own ecological footprint, they have a comprehensive tool to see whether actually they're moving in the right direction.

Obviously, cities on their own have a hard time to be sustainable. For example when we analyzed Paris, we found that the area supporting Paris is about 300 times larger than Paris itself! Now is that a problem? If there are 300 Paris areas available to support Paris, obviously not. But we are in a world that is ecologically constrained. Already today we use 20% more than Earth can regenerate.

So cities is really where the action happens, where we have to find out how can we use city structures more effectively so all people can live well within the limited capacity that we have, now roughly 2 hectares of ecological capacity per person world-wide. How can we build cities that can operate on that budget? That's the big challenge and that's where we can make a huge contribution.

SOURCE:

Video Clip at Big Picture TV:http://big-picture.tv/index.php?id=23&cat=&a=37

Mathis Wackernagel is a global leader in Ecological Footprint Analysis. He is the Sustainability Program Director at Redefining Progress, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Oakland, California. Website: www.rprogress.org

Resources on the Ecological Footprint:

www.redefiningprogress.org/footprint/

The Global Footprint Network: A non-profit organization that promotes the Ecological Footprint, a tool that makes sustainability measurable. Together with its global partners, GFN coordinates research, develops methodological standards and provides decision makers with robust resource accounts to ensure that the human economy operates within the Earth's budget. www.footprintnetwork.org

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