Measure the size of the feet - not the number of heads.

The global impact of the developed world.

 

Land as Wealth

 

More than 200 years ago, US Founding Father Benjamin Franklin wrote that "…There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth: by war. which permits taking by force the wealth of other nations. By trade, which to be profitable requires cheating. By agriculture, through which we plant the seeds and create new wealth as if by miracle. " [1]

 

Though modern banking systems have sought to obfuscate and pervert the process of wealth creation, the immutable facts are much as Franklin observed. Just and sustainable wealth arises only from nature - the concepts of credit and debt are a fiction imposed on our planetary ecosystems. Earth's capital account cannot be depleted without consequences for future generations. If we are to live sustainably we must aspire to a quality of life which is within the means of nature. To put it another way, we must learn to live - along with other peoples and species - within the interest on nature's global capital account.

 

The case of energy is perhaps the clearest example of where our demands are being met from unsustainable capital rather than renewable revenue. As visionary economist Herman E. Daly relates; "Pre-nineteenth century man lived on energy revenue (sunlight captured by plants, the "original capitalists"). Present day augments this revenue by consuming energy capital (coal, the "stored sunlight of Palaeozoic summers"). " [2]

 

Such a viewpoint has been echoed by many notable environmentalists and ecological economists; for example,  Capra, Henderson and Korten[3],. All point to the need to create an economy based on natural limits which  acknowledge the basic laws of thermodynamics.

 

Footprinting Fundamentals

 

There have been few attempts to operationalise the measurement of 'nature's interest' to provide an indicator of sustainability. Energy flow analysis is complex, hard to communicate, and difficult to relate to natural limits. Perhaps because of this, the literature on carrying capacity has proven, quite literally, a more fertile ground for research into a unified indicator of environmental sustainability. Measuring the availability and bio-productivity of land, and therefore the capacity to sustainably support life, is one way to express captured sunlight and therefore nature's available 'interest'.

 

One such area-based indicator is the ecological footprint, a term first coined about 10 years ago by Mathis Wackernagel and Bill Rees whilst working in the University of British Columbia.  It is defined as the area of land required to sustainably provide the required resources and absorb any wastes.

 

The thinking behind the footprint measure is firmly rooted in the agrarian economies of Europe. When historian Fernand Braudel wrote Le Méditerranée in 1949, a chronicle of the Mediterranean in the late 16^th  century, he pointed out that the hectare was a far more reliable comparative indicator of economic activity across the diverse Mediterranean basin than the ducat, whose exchange rate and net worth varied wildly. Economist Thomas Malthus wrote similarly , more than 200 years ago, of the importance of land to the development of the English economy predicting a ‘perpetual struggle for room and food’.

 

Though pre-industrial writers were more interested in the agricultural uses of land, Wackernagel and Rees had the insight to incorporate other land uses - including the accounting of fossil fuel energy through carbon sequestration by forested land (now embodied in the Kyoto Protocol). In doing so they created a powerful methodology able to aggregate a range of environmental into a single indicator of sustainability. Though originally conceived as an urban planning tool, work by the author, in conjunction with Mathis Wackernagel and others, has brought the EF concept to a wider audience using software tools to simplify and augment the footprint calculations.

 

Land as a finite resource.

 

To state the obvious: we only have so much land. As Mark Twain once said: "The problem with land is that they stopped making it some time ago.".[4]

 

The surface area of the planet is about 51 billion hectares. Of this, less than 15 billion is land. Only two-thirds of this, at most, could be classed as productive in the sense that it can support 10% or more forest cover, is permanent pasture, or arable land. The remainder is inhospitable desert, ice-covered and rock[5].

 

It we take an upper estimate of 10 billion usable hectares, and assume a population of 6 billion[6], then this gives an average 'earth share' of  about 1.7 hectares per capita (an area 165 metres by 100 metres). A figure which will reduce to just over a hectare by 2050 if the UN medium-term population predictions of around 9 billion are realised. Adding to this the productive regions of the oceans takes  the present average earth share to 2.1 hectares.

 

These figures do, of course, ignore the rights of the 15 million, or so, other species that share our space. According to the World Commission on Environment and Development at least 12% of land should be preserved to protect biodiversity. Many ecologists believe this is insufficient with estimates up to 75%,  depending on the habitat. If we take the modest WCED figure then humanity's current land share is 1.5 hectares per capita, reducing to just under a hectare in 2050.

 

This shrinking space must service all our needs (food, materials, recreation, living space, energy) and be capable of assimilating all of our wastes (arguably the most pressing being the sequestration of greenhouse gases). Based on current global average yields, and ignoring the massive energy inputs common with modern agriculture, around half the 1999 earth share would be required to provide meat and vegetables alone[7].

 

Currently available data suggests that humanity is drawing down the planet's capital account rather than living within the interest. In 1997 (using 1993 data), Wackernagel suggested an overshoot of around 35% (including productive sea space) - a figure soon to be revisited.

 

Whereas the available Earth Share is 2.1 hectares, the average global citizen has a footprint of 2.8 hectares.

 

League of Nations

 

Using ecological footprinting as a measure of impact the issue becomes, not one of population but, one of human load on the environment. In effect, we are measuring the size of the feet rather than the number of heads.

 

The latest estimates (based on 1993 data)[8] suggests that consumers in developed countries have very large feet indeed. Table 1 shows the Top 10 ranked Nations from the 52 that were analysed for the Rio+5 Earth Summit[9].

 

The 'Footprint' shows the average per capita footprint for that Country. The 'Available Capacity' column shows the potential productive capacity available within the Country. Where this is higher than the Footprint then it is theoretically possible for that Country to meet its own needs. The next column indicates any difference between the available capacity and estimated footprints. A negative number means that - at current consumption levels - it is not possible to meet needs from locally available capacity.

 

As important, if not more so, is how the footprints compare with the average Earth Share. Differences are shown in the final column. All figures include an allowance for productive sea space to give an average Earth Share of 2.1 hectares. The UK ranks 16^th with a footprint of 5.2 hectares per capita.

 

Table 1: Top 10 Ranked Nations

Country	Footprint ha/capita	Available Capacity ha/capita	Deficit (if Negative) ha/capita	Comparison with avg. Earth Share
United States	10.3	6.7	-3.6	+8.2
Australia	9.0	14.0	5.0	+6.9
Canada	7.7	9.6	1.9	+5.6
New Zealand	7.6	20.4	12.8	+5.5
Iceland	7.4	21.7	14.3	+5.3
Singapore	7.2	0.1	-7.1	+5.1
Norway	6.2	6.3	0.1	+4.1
Hong Kong	6.1	0.0	-6.1	+4.0
Finland	6.0	8.6	2.6	+3.9
Russian Federation	6.0	3.7	-2.3	+3.9

 

Thus the average American not only consumes around 5 times the average Earth Share but the USA would be unable, with current technologies, to sustainably meet its needs from within its own borders. The latter holds true for Singapore, Hong Kong and the Russian Federation (as it was then).

 

How can a Nation use more than it has?

 

There are two main ways in which deficits are resolved. Firstly, a Country trades with others that have a surplus of resources. Secondly, and more significantly, ecological natural capital is diminished and/or renewable resources are 'used' at unsustainable rates.

 

The former is most readily seen in the case of fossil fuel use - the stored energy of 'Palaeozoic summers' - where use of ancient bio-productivity leads to present-day pollution. Examples of the latter include  soil degradation, deforestation, over-fishing and over-grazing.

 

A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if everyone consumed as much as the average American then the planet could only support around one billion people using current technologies - around four times the number of Americans that currently reside in the USA.

 

Bottom of the League

 

Table 2 shows the lowest ranked Nations. All use less than the average Earth Share with Bangladesh using one-quarter of the global average. Interestingly, Peru and to a lesser extent Indonesia both have a potential ecological surplus that is not used. The may be good reason for this, forest or biodiversity protection over and above the notional 12% used in the calculations, for example.

 

Table 2: 10 lowest ranked Nations

Country	Footprint ha/capita	Available Capacity ha/capita	Deficit (if Negative) ha/capita	Comparison with avg. Earth Share
Peru	1.6	7.7	6.1	-0.5
Nigeria	1.5	0.6	-0.9	-0.6
Philippines	1.5	0.9	-0.6	-0.6
Indonesia	1.4	2.6	1.2	-0.7
China	1.2	0.8	-0.4	-0.9
Egypt	1.2	0.2	-1.0	-0.9
Ethiopia	0.8	0.5	-0.3	-1.3
India	0.8	0.5	-0.3	-1.3
Pakistan	0.8	0.5	-0.3	-1.3
Bangladesh	0.5	0.3	-0.2	-1.6

 

India and China are the two most populous countries in the world. If just they alone were to reach US consumption levels, as they are being encouraged to do, then our global overshoot would increase from 35% to 129%. Even if the population of these two countries achieved the average earth share this would increase overshoot to 44%.

 

Clearly such a development path is impossible without corresponding reductions in consumption by the higher ranking nations.

 

Foot Notes

 

Such National comparisons beg many questions about our lifestyles, our relationship with the natural world and our global responsibilities.

 

Ecological footprinting provides a useful indicator of sustainability but cannot provide the answers anymore than standing on the bathroom scales can tell you how to lose weight.

 

What such an analysis does show is the scale of change that is necessary to achieve sustainability and that, no matter what we are led to believe, we cannot all achieve the consumption patterns of the high footprint Nations even at current, let alone predicted, population levels.

 

Current environment policy is merely paying lip-service to the global resource inequalities by tinkering with the proverbial deck-chairs on our planetary Titanic. Meanwhile, the real work is going on below decks where the fragile hull is being turned into yet more deckchairs!

 

If we are to be good global citizens and avoid the taking of wealth by war or stealth, as Benjamin Franklin cautioned, then we must learn to look beneath our feet and plant our own seeds.