Ecological Footprint: Difference between revisions
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'''= The Ecological Footprint is a data-driven metric that tells us how close we are to the goal of sustainable living. Footprint accounts work like bank statements, documenting whether we are living within our ecological budget or consuming nature’s resources faster than the planet can renew them.''' [http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/at_a_glance/] | '''= The Ecological Footprint is a data-driven metric that tells us how close we are to the goal of sustainable living. Footprint accounts work like bank statements, documenting whether we are living within our ecological budget or consuming nature’s resources faster than the planet can renew them.''' [http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/at_a_glance/] | ||
=Contextual Quote= | |||
"‘For the management of renewable resources there are two obvious principles of sustainable development. First that harvest rates should equal regeneration rates (sustained yields). Second that waste emission rates should equal the natural assimilative capacities of the ecosystems into which the wastes are emitted. Regenerative and assimilative capacities must be treated as natural capital, and failure to maintain these capacities must be treated as capital consumption, and therefore not sustainable.’" | |||
- Mathis Wackernagel [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234092351_An_overview_on_ecological_footprint_and_sustainable_development_A_chat_with_Mathis_Wackernagel] | |||
=Description= | =Description= | ||
"Building on human carrying capacity debate in the early 1990s, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees introduced a new environmental accounting method, the Ecological Footprint, to measure human demand on the biosphere. After the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio the need to reduce human impact on the Earth became undeniable and widely recognized. What Wackernagel and Rees proposed was a method capable of making global ecological limits accessible by comparing human demand on the biosphere to its regenerative capacity. The method does this by expressing both resource demand and supply in terms of area necessary to support these flows. The use of an area as a measure of life-supporting natural capital was chosen to underline that many basic ecosystem services and ecological resources are driven by areas where photosynthesis takes place , showing in this way how humanity is constrained by nature’s negentropic capacity to transform low quality solar energy into high quality chemical energy and living matter." | |||
(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234092351_An_overview_on_ecological_footprint_and_sustainable_development_A_chat_with_Mathis_Wackernagel) | |||
=History= | |||
"The ecological footprint (EF) was developed at the University of British Columbia by Dr. William Rees and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel. It estimates how much of Earth's productive land and sea is used to produce the food, materials and energy that we consume and to assimilate our wastes. The EF looks behind the scenes to see what it takes to make an alarm clock, a cup of coffee, clothes, a home or to operate an automobile. This gets complicated in our global economy where the products originate from around the world." | "The ecological footprint (EF) was developed at the University of British Columbia by Dr. William Rees and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel. It estimates how much of Earth's productive land and sea is used to produce the food, materials and energy that we consume and to assimilate our wastes. The EF looks behind the scenes to see what it takes to make an alarm clock, a cup of coffee, clothes, a home or to operate an automobile. This gets complicated in our global economy where the products originate from around the world." | ||
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* [[Global Footprint Network]] | * [[Global Footprint Network]] | ||
* [[P2P Metrics]] | * [[P2P Metrics]] | ||
[[Category:Ecology]] | [[Category:Ecology]] | ||
[[Category:Economics]] | [[Category:Economics]] | ||
[[Category:P2P Accounting]] | [[Category:P2P Accounting]] | ||
Revision as of 07:56, 27 December 2020
= The Ecological Footprint is a data-driven metric that tells us how close we are to the goal of sustainable living. Footprint accounts work like bank statements, documenting whether we are living within our ecological budget or consuming nature’s resources faster than the planet can renew them. [1]
Contextual Quote
"‘For the management of renewable resources there are two obvious principles of sustainable development. First that harvest rates should equal regeneration rates (sustained yields). Second that waste emission rates should equal the natural assimilative capacities of the ecosystems into which the wastes are emitted. Regenerative and assimilative capacities must be treated as natural capital, and failure to maintain these capacities must be treated as capital consumption, and therefore not sustainable.’"
- Mathis Wackernagel [2]
Description
"Building on human carrying capacity debate in the early 1990s, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees introduced a new environmental accounting method, the Ecological Footprint, to measure human demand on the biosphere. After the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio the need to reduce human impact on the Earth became undeniable and widely recognized. What Wackernagel and Rees proposed was a method capable of making global ecological limits accessible by comparing human demand on the biosphere to its regenerative capacity. The method does this by expressing both resource demand and supply in terms of area necessary to support these flows. The use of an area as a measure of life-supporting natural capital was chosen to underline that many basic ecosystem services and ecological resources are driven by areas where photosynthesis takes place , showing in this way how humanity is constrained by nature’s negentropic capacity to transform low quality solar energy into high quality chemical energy and living matter." (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234092351_An_overview_on_ecological_footprint_and_sustainable_development_A_chat_with_Mathis_Wackernagel)
History
"The ecological footprint (EF) was developed at the University of British Columbia by Dr. William Rees and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel. It estimates how much of Earth's productive land and sea is used to produce the food, materials and energy that we consume and to assimilate our wastes. The EF looks behind the scenes to see what it takes to make an alarm clock, a cup of coffee, clothes, a home or to operate an automobile. This gets complicated in our global economy where the products originate from around the world." (http://radicalsimplicity.org/footprint.html)