Balance Earth's "Eco Wealth" the Same Way as Finances, Group Says

John Roach
for National Geographic News

October 13, 2006

By October 9 humans had already used more of Earth's resources in 2006
than the planet can renew this year, according to an accounting tool
that calculates our so-called ecological footprint.

The Ecological Footprint tool measures how much land and water area a population uses to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste.

The tool "allows us to compare human demands on nature with nature's ability to renew resources," said Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the tool and executive director of the Global Footprint Network in Oakland, California.

Today humanity's ecological footprint is nearly 30 percent larger than what the planet can regenerate in a given year, the tool reveals.

For example, forests are cut down faster than they regrow, fish are taken from the oceans faster than their populations regenerate, and groundwater is sucked up faster than aquifers are replenished.

(Related feature: "Challenges to Humanity: Water Pressure" in National Geographic magazine.)

To better manage our resources, world leaders should balance their ecological footprint the same way that they balance their finances, Wackernagel and colleagues say.

"If you don't look at your bank account statement, how do you know if you are moving toward bankruptcy or success?" Wackernagel said.

Going Bankrupt

Wackernagel and his then professor William Rees at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, created the Ecological Footprint tool in the wake of the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Sustainability—living within the limits of the Earth's resources—was a buzzword at the time, Wackernagel says, but nobody knew what those limits were.

"If we don't look at the global limits and act accordingly, sustainable development is futile. It's totally futile," he said.

Erik Assadourian is a researcher with the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute who studies global consumption patterns.

He says that the concept of an ecological footprint reinforces the message being delivered by rigorous scientific analyses on the effects of overconsumption.

"We are living unsustainably as a species, and that's going to trigger massive problems," he said.

According to Wackernagel, if global consumption patterns grow at even the moderate rates calculated by the UN, humans will use double the Earth's regenerative capacity by 2050.

At that point, the accumulated ecological debt will amount to resources that would take the Earth about 40 years to renew if humans completely stopped using natural resources.

"We believe that's at the upper limit of what's ecologically possible," Wackernagel said.

To help prevent humans from exhausting the planet's resources, Wackernagel and colleagues aim to have ten countries using the footprint tool to manage their ecological wealth as they do their finances by 2015.

"It's in any government's interest to know how much biological capacity they have available and how much they use," Wackernagel said. "Otherwise they are blind to significant risks."

The network lists 22 countries as potential early adopters of the tool, including several European Union nations, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Russia.

But absent from this list is the United States, one of the largest consumers of natural resources in the world.

According to Ecological Footprint calculations, the average U.S. citizen requires 24 acres (10 hectares) to produce enough food, shelter, energy, and other resources to sustain his or her lifestyle.

Worldwide there are only 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares) of biologically productive land available for each person.

Put another way, if everyone on Earth lived like U.S. citizens, the planet would need to be at least five times bigger, Wackernagel says.

Smaller Footprint

Assadourian, of the Worldwatch Institute, says that a complete transformation in how we live is required to reach a sustainable balance of resource use.

One way to get there is to consume in a nondestructible fashion—using recyclable products, biodegradable packaging, and renewable sources of energy, for example.

(Related news: "Africa Farms Get Massive Pledge to Spur 'Green Revolution'" [September 15, 2006].)

Humans must also come to understand and appreciate their dependence on nature and learn to share nature's resources equitably, Assadourian says.

"We are at a moment in history when we make decisions [and] these decisions will affect thousands of years of human civilization," he said.

Wackernagel said that the first step toward leaving a smaller footprint is to ask: "How can I have a better quality of life?"

The answer, he says, almost invariably leads toward a lifestyle that is less resource-intensive, from living in cities with short commutes to using clean energy sources like wind and solar power.

"We need to focus on the incentive for technologies that allow us to live in a small footprint with a great quality of life," he said.

"Technology can help us use resources more rapidly or focus us more efficiently, and it's up to us which technology to use."

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