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Introduction and Purpose
On February 11, 2023, a Google search for ecological footprint returned 47.6 million results;Footnote11 A search for carbon footprint, which is an industry spin-off from ecological footprint, returned 173 million hits. The difference is indicative of modern society’s simplistic focus on carbon emission, which is merely one, albeit important, symptom, of overshoot. See W. E. Rees, “Overshoot: Cognitive Obsolescence and the Population Conundrum,” Journal of Population and Sustainability 7, no. 1 (2023): 15–38. https://doi.org/10.3197/JPS.63799953906865.View all notes UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated at the opening of the 2023 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in January that “humanity uses 1.6 Earths, but we only have one,” citing ecological footprint accounting data; media monitoring company Meltwater found 13,500 articles from 95 countries covering Global Footprint Network’s 2022 Earth Overshoot Day on the Web, with a combined media impression of 20 billion potential reads. Such statistics affirm that in the three decades since it was formally introduced,Footnote22 W. E. Rees, “Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: What Urban Economics Leaves Out,” Environment and Urbanization 4, no 2 (1992): 121–30; M. Wackernagel and W. E. Rees, Our Ecological Footprint—Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 1996).View all notes the ecological footprint (EF) metric has become one of the world’s best-known metrics of humanity’s (un)sustainability.
But has it made much difference? That is up to you to judge. To help inform your judgment, this article outlines the foundational principles of ecological footprint accounting (EFA); presents some of its main findings and implications; “locates” the method in the economic development debate; and addresses the major criticisms and weaknesses of the method. Can users be confident that the results of footprint analyses are reasonably accurate and sufficiently reliable for sustainable development policy? We end the article by offering two conceptually different responses to ecological footprint results. Readers are free to construct their own variations.
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The Simple Logic of Ecological Footprint Accounting
Ecological footprint accounting provides an overarching yet conceptually simple method to estimate the extent by which human demand exceeds Earth’s regenerative and waste assimilation capacities. We start from the fact that humans are consumer organisms that make major energy and material demands on ecosystems. Ecological footprint accounting is therefore designed to answer the following questions: In any given year, how much of Earth’s bioproductive land and water area is used to support any specified human population (or activity) and how much and what kinds of such productive biocapacity does the study population, country, or planet have?
Ecological footprint accounting recognizes that humans are, in effect, competing with each other and other animal species for the limited products of photosynthesis not used by plants themselves (aka “net primary production”). On the demand side, ecological footprint accounts add up all the nonoverlapping productive ecosystem areas needed by a specified human population to provide its resource and metabolic energy needs. Assessments can be done from a consumption perspective (accounting for the biocapacity associated with final consumption of households) or from a production perspective (the resources required to produce the income used for consumption). For the world, the consumption and production assessments are identical, but not so for a country that may export financial services and software code (with a minimal direct biocapacity component) while importing bananas and apples (which have direct, readily quantifiable cropland requirements). The demand on nature is also shaped by technology. For instance, the quantity of biocapacity needed to produce a piece of paper depends on level of recycling, energy efficiency of production machinery, forest yields, and so on. Thus, we define the consumption-based ecological footprint of a study population as:
The total area of productive ecosystems that the population requires, on a continuous basis, to produce the bio-resources it consumes (e.g., plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to assimilate its wastes, particularly carbon dioxide emissions, wherever on Earth the relevant ecosystems are located.
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Our Contemporary Predicament: Eco-Deficits and Overshoot
Using “global hectares” as the common measurement unit, ecological footprint accounts enable analysts to weigh the ecological footprint of any subregional, regional, or national population (demand) against available biocapacity (supply). When a country’s domestic biocapacity exceeds its ecological footprint, that country has a biocapacity reserve. Such a buffer can be used for biodiversity protection, for exports or as a hedge against changing biophysical conditions—for example, global warming, deteriorating geopolitics, or anything else that might disrupt global supply lines and trade flows.
On the other hand, if a nation’s ecological footprint exceeds its domestic biocapacity, we say that the country is running a biocapacity deficit. A biocapacity deficit means that the population is demanding more than its biocapacity can provide—its consumption of fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton for clothing, and other industrial fiber, and its need for carbon sinks (to assimilate domestic carbon dioxide emissions) exceed its domestic regenerative and assimilative capacities, respectively. Such deficits are possible via three mechanisms: (i) net imports of biocapacity; (ii) exploitation of the global commons (e.g., harvesting open-access fish stocks in international waters or using the atmosphere as a CO2 sink); and (iii) overexploitation and depletion of domestic biocapacity (national overshoot). On the global scale, only (iii) is possible as Earth cannot import from “elsewhere.”
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Our Global Predicament
National footprint and biocapacity accounts show that the 2022 human population of 8 billion had a total ecological footprint of approximately 20.6 billion global hectares (gha), for a global average of 2.6 gha per person. However, global available biocapacity was only 12 billion global ha or 1.5 gha per person. This means that by 2022, the entire human enterprise was in overshoot, exceeding the planet’s regenerative capacity by 70%. This number is an underestimate for various reasons, including the facts that UN data reflect yields and productivity but not the depletion of the soils/water on which the yields depend, and that not all human demands on nature, including toxic pollution, are captured by UN statistics.
Footprint results also highlight the vast and growing inequality between high-income and low-income populations and individuals. Average high-income European ecological footprints are almost three times larger than globally available biocapacity (approximately 4.5 gha/person vs. 1.5 gha/person); the American or Canadian ecological footprint of approximately 8 gha per person is five times the per-capita availability of global biocapacity. In other words, it would take five Earth-like planets to support just the present human population sustainably at contemporary North America energy and material standards (and that would leave little biocapacity to sustain wild organisms). Of course, averages don’t tell the whole story. Differences within countries can be even larger than among countries. High-income individuals can have footprints vastly larger than their national average.
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Growing Influence, Common Brickbats
While the world has yet to respond fully to the implications of overshoot, our findings have been included in numerous reports by organizations like the World Wide Fund for Nature, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the UN Environment Programme, the UN Development Programme, and the European Environment Agency. Indeed, since its inception in 2003, Global Footprint Network has engaged with more than 70 country governments on six continents and partnered in specific projects with more than 80 organizations. At least 15 national governments have applied the metric to their own policy initiatives; 12 national governments have tested the ecological footprint accounts for their country; to assess replicability, some of these government agencies have even recalculated or reproduced national footprint estimates; French statistical offices regenerated the annual time series to within 1-3 percentage points of the original Global Footprint Network results.
The date each year by which humans have used the equivalent of that year’s
planetary biocapacity. Click on the image to enlarge.
To expand its reach, Global Footprint Network launched the Ecological Footprint Explorer open data platform in 2017, making ecological footprint and biocapacity data for more than 200 countries freely available (https://data.footprintnetwork.org). Since 2019, the production of the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts has been put under the aegis of the Footprint Data Foundation (www.FoDaFo.org), in collaboration with York University in Toronto, Canada. This makes sure that the accounts are produced independently, under a transparent governance regime.
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On the Other Hand
Despite the growing scope and acceptance of ecological footprint and biocapacity accounts, the method has been contested, particularly by economists,Footnote20, technological optimists,Footnote21, and eco-modernists.Footnote22. The latter assert that “Ecological Footprint measurements, as currently constructed, are so misleading as to preclude their use in any serious science or policy context.” Most criticism seems to be based on misreading or misinterpreting ecological footprint accounting as “social theory” when, in fact, the accounts are a quantitative indicator of the biocapacity embodied in human activities and the available supply.
Global Footprint Network has compiled a comprehensive review of, and responses to, these limitations and criticisms.Footnote2323 See https://www.footprintnetwork.org/content/uploads/2020/08/Footprint-Limitations-and-Criticism.pdf.View all notes In the following, we summarize six common criticisms.
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Country Overshoot days vary widely. Click on the image to enlarge.
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Outlook: What Might This All Mean?
If we are unable to identify reality and therefore unable to act upon what we see, then we are not simply childish but have reduced ourselves to figures of fun—ridiculous figures of our unconscious.Footnote3131 J. R. Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1995), 21–22.View all notes
Despite a half century of scientists’ warnings and international meetings to confront the “environmental crisis,” the results of ecological footprint assessments, planetary boundary studies, and similar analyses have enjoyed little meaningful policy uptake. Many symptoms of overshoot are steadily becoming more pronounced. This begs the question: How has a supposedly intelligent species gotten into such a dangerous predicament? How has modern humanity become “ridiculous figures of our unconscious”?
To stimulate a strategic debate about the human predicament, the slow response, and what to do next, the authors offer two complementary perspectives, one departing from evolutionary biology (human “nature”), and the other highlighting modern society’s dominant social narratives (cultural “nurture”). Both perspectives carry kernels of truth that we hope will assist you, dear reader, in deciding what ecological footprint findings mean for you.
Rees’s bioevolutionary perspective posits that eco-overshoot springs, in part, from totally natural human behaviors. These innate behaviors are variations of heritable, once-adaptive survival strategies that have been “selected for” in the course of human evolution but that have arguably become maladaptive in the modern age.
Among the most basic of these are the facts that humans, like all other species, are capable of exponential population growth and tend to harvest all accessible food/resources as rapidly as possible.Footnote3232 The latter was once a highly adaptive behavior that increased immediate material security in the absence of refrigeration or when immediate competition was intense.View all notes However, for 99.99% of anatomically modern humans’ 250,000-year history these expansionist tendencies were mostly held in check by “negative feedback” (food shortages, disease, competition, conflict, etc.).Footnote3333 Normally, population dynamics reflect a fluctuating balance between positive feedback (exponential growth potential) and negative feedback (deteriorating environmental factors).View all notes It has been only during the past 200 years that our species has been able to realize, for the first time, its full expansionary potential. Modern medicine and the abundance of resources made possible by fossil fuels suppressed or eliminated many negative feedback mechanisms previously holding us back. Since the early 19th century, the global population has expanded eightfold, from 1 to 8 billion, real gross world product (approximately equal to consumption) has grown by over 100-fold, and fossil fuel use has grown by over 1,200-fold. Note that with exponential growth, half the fossil fuels ever used by humans have been burned in just approximately the past 30 years!Footnote3434 See https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth and https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels.View all notes Many other resources have similarly been dramatically run down or depleted. Do we need to point out again that as the human ecological footprint has ballooned, available biocapacity has been eroding?
It’s Partially in the Genes: Have Humans Become Unsustainable “by Nature”?
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The Prevailing “Sustainability Story” Is Self-Defeating—It Would Serve Us Well to Change the Story
Wackernagel shares Rees’s concern about deep-rooted behavioral biases against ending overshoot by design. However, he emphasizes that there are strong cultural factors at play that favor disaster. And he believes that some of these hold-backs can be overcome. The payoff would be large because overshoot will end one way or another; it’s better if we get to choose how.
Wackernagel also notes that whether overshoot gets resolved by disaster or design is not a binary question, an everything-or-nothing situation. The future will be shaped by a combination of imposed events and deliberate choice, both individual and collective. People can affect how exposed they will be to each of them by determining how much they want to reduce their own risk exposure. While the degree of influence over outcomes varies among people, the choice for every individual is whether to act decisively to prepare themselves, their city, or their country for a future of climate change and resource constraints, or to ignore overshoot and avoid taking corrective action.
Wackernagel agrees that a fundamental factor tipping the balance toward disaster is that many see personal, civic, or corporate corrective actions as a cost to themselves that appears to outweigh the benefits. (Such resistors tend to believe that they are caught in a “free-rider” on open-access dynamic or common-pool resources.Footnote4646 “Free rider” denotes a situation in which the free-rider’s and society’s incentives are misaligned. See Rees’s summary earlier in this article of the “public good” and “open access” free-rider problems.View all notes) While ultimately self-defeating, this narrative is omnipresent in many variants. It is even reflected in the title of Al Gore’s widely viewed climate change documentary from 2007, An Inconvenient Truth. The term “inconvenient truth” implies that the more one knows about climate change, the greater the burden one would have to carry; it may even suggest that embracing the truth would be costlier to the actor than ignoring it. In essence, it emphasizes the free-rider’s perspective: While costly for society as a whole, to disregard the problem appears cost- and effort-saving for the individual.
Even UN initiatives and processes are trapped in the premise that humanity is caught up in free-rider dynamics. The COP climate conferences and negotiations build on the assumption that addressing the global warming challenge can be addressed only through coordinated collective action. For instance, the UN climate negotiations ask countries to contribute selflessly to the global common good (by ending carbon dioxide emissions) through “Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC)”. To call it “contribution” rather than an investment into one’s own resilience invokes the idea of being in a “free-riding” dynamic. Consequently, these countries tend to pledge modest emissions reductions and then often fail to meet their commitments.
All such processes breed reluctant participants who, by acting from the narrow conventional viewpoint, remain underprepared for what is to come. The “free-rider” veil limits people’s ability to recognize their true long-term self-interest. However, positioning the climate story in the larger context of ecological overshoot can help change one’s perspective on what constitutes self-interest. Up-framing the problem from greenhouse emissions to longer term resource security makes it obvious that failing to act exposes oneself to higher risks—that is, one’s inaction is ultimately self-destructive.
Persistent overshoot, not merely carbon emissions, is a more helpful and empowering perspective. It provides context for effective action. It illustrates that what countries (and the world community) really need are not NDCs but proactive “National Plans for Succeeding in the Predictable Future of Climate Change and Resource Constraints.”
True, ecological overshoot is so large that no entity can singlehandedly shift the global trajectory. But each entity has sway over how well prepared it is to ride out the future of accelerating climate change and resource constraints.
A corollary: No entity is trapped by the inaction of others. Rather, the incentive to act increases as others do not, because others’ inaction increases one’s risk exposure. Why would I not take independent defensive/positive measures to increase my chance of thriving in a future of climate change and resource constraints? A beneficial side effect is that effective self-preparation not only contributes to shifting the global trajectory but may even serve as an example for others.
Here is a three-point argument summarizing why the “free-riding” on open-access resources is not the dominant dynamic shaping our world operating in persistent overshoot:
The future has never been more predictable. We know that people will want to eat, be housed, feel safe, have fun. We also know that we will live in a world with more climate change, increased competition for dwindling ecological resources, and an eventual phase-out of fossil energy. These forces will shape any imaginable scenario. This does not mean the future is fully predictable, but never before has so much been known about many of its formative conditions.
This future is approaching more rapidly than individuals, corporations, cities, and countries can comfortably adapt to. Just how fast can humanity contract from using 1.7 Earths to using 0.5 Earth, the level of demand that may offer longer term resilience? This time constraint means that the urgency is not about “facing a future problem” but rather about recognizing that most of us are already running late in tending to our own local self-preservation. For agents not to aggressively prepare themselves, their assets, and their product lines for this emerging context is to increase their own social and economic risk exposure. Again, waiting for others is a self-defeating strategy.
If we have accurately described the future context for the economy, then the relevant economic question becomes: What will hold value in a future of climate change and resource constraints? Which kind of businesses will thrive? Which kind of city and country infrastructure is essential? Obviously, every dollar spent in maintaining or building out assets that are likely to depreciate rapidly is a loss. The owners of such assets benefit instead from shifting their investments to those that enhance their future prospects and wealth.
What are the opportunities for action? The biggest ones for transformation are those that are physically replicable and nonexclusive. These are solutions that do not take space or resources away for others to implement that same solution for themselves. These are solutions that take pressure out of the system. Increasing one’s energy efficiency and shifting energy use to locally produced renewables does not compete with anybody else. On the contrary, solutions that are physically replicable can be more easily adopted by others, reducing pressure for the entire system. Global Footprint Network has developed a collection of examples in its “Power of Possibility” platform.Footnote4747 www.overshootday.org/pop by Global Footprint Network outlines options for reducing overshoot.View all notes They include responses in the domains of population, energy, food, city infrastructure, and restoration.
Wackernagel believes that increasing one’s resource security, which then also amplifies the possibilities for others to increase their resource security, is ethics in action.Footnote4848 M. Wackernagel, L. Hanscom, P. Jayasinghe, D. Lin, A. Murthy, E. Neill, and P. Raven, “The Importance of Resource Security for Poverty Eradication,” Nature Sustainability 4 (2021): 731–38, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00708-4.View all notes Tending to one’s own resource security helps accelerate a positive flywheel that improves the situation for all involved. True security-enhancing solutions are good for you, and for all others. This approach is ethically more robust than action based on moral duty because it moves us from charity to solidarity, from handing something down to others to partnering with others eye-to-eye to create a better situation for all involved. In other words, putting the emphasis on enhancing resource security rather than on reducing footprints unleashes corrective action, also strengthening solidarity.
Do you believe that you need to prepare yourself for the future of climate change and resource constraints? If so, then do it. If you can show that self-preparation is likely to pay off, then others will take notice and start to imitate your actions. This may be one of the most powerful contributions to ending overshoot by design.
Notes
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William E. Rees is a population ecologist and ecological economist. He is Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning; a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a founding Director of the One Earth Initiative; and a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute. Professor Rees' research focuses on the biophysical requirements for sustainability and the policy implications of global ecological trends. He is perhaps best known as the originator, and co-developer with his graduate students, of Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA). EFA shows that the human enterprise is already in ecological 'overshoot' and that we would need 4.4 Earth-like planets to support just the present world population at Canadian material standards. Such findings led to a special focus on cities as particularly vulnerable components of the human ecosystem and on psycho-cognitive barriers to ecologically rational behaviour and policy. Professor Rees has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed and popular articles on these and related topics.
Mathis Wackernagel is co-founder of Global Footprint Network. He created the Ecological Footprint with Professor William Rees at the University of British Columbia as part of his Ph.D. in community and regional planning. Mathis also earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Mathis has worked on sustainability with governments, corporations and international NGOs on six continents and has lectured at more than a hundred universities. He previously served as director of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland, California, and ran the Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad at Anáhuac University in Xalapa, Mexico. Mathis has authored and contributed to more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, numerous articles, reports and various books on sustainability that focus on embracing resource limits and developing metrics for sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth; Sharing Nature’s Interest; Der Footprint: Die Welt neu vermessen; Ecological Footprint: Managing Our Biocapacity Budget; and WWF International’s Living Planet Report.
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