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Experts agree that human activities are harmful to the global environment. Since the industrial revolution, the global economy has grown dramatically. Overall, it is a success because rising incomes have helped millions of people out of poverty. But it has been fueled by population growth and increasing consumption of natural resources.
Growing demand to meet the needs of more than 7 billion people has transformed land use and generated unprecedented levels of pollution, affecting biodiversity, forests, wetlands, blueprints, and more. 39, water, soils and the quality of the air. have consumed more natural resources in 2018 than Earth can regenerate this year, according to the California-based Global Footprint Network. This environmental nonprofit calculates the annual arrival of Earth Surge Day – the date at which humanity's demands on nature exceed what network analysts believe the Earth can regenerate during any l & # 39; year. August 1st is the first date since the beginning of ecological overfishing in the early 1970s.
As an environmental economist and sustainability specialist, I am particularly interested in the metrics and indicators that can help us understand the human uses of terrestrial ecosystems. Better measures of the impacts of human activities can help identify ways to maintain both human well-being and natural resources.
Earth Overshoot Day is a fascinating concept that has raised awareness of the increasing impact of human activities on the planet. Unfortunately, the methodology used to calculate it and the ecological footprint on which it is based are conceptually flawed and virtually unusable in any scientific or political context. In my opinion, the ecological footprint does not ultimately measure the excessive use of natural resources – and it is likely to underestimate it.
Increasing demands, limited resources
The Global Footprint Network estimates when Earth Day will arrive on the basis of its national footprint accounts. These include large sets of data that the organization uses to calculate two broad indicators:
- The ecological footprint, perhaps the most commonly used measure of the environmental impacts of using human resources. Each country's ecological footprint is an estimate of the biological resources needed to meet the consumption demands of its population and to absorb its carbon emissions.
- National biocapacity, which is an estimate of how each country's ecosystems can produce the natural resources consumed by humans and absorb the waste and pollution that humans generate.
These two measures are expressed in global hectares. One hectare equals 10,000 square meters, or about 2.47 acres.
Overrun
To estimate when Earth Day will occur, the Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days in a year for which the Earth has sufficient biocapacity to provide the ecological footprint total of humans. The rest of the year represents a "global overrun".
When the footprint of global consumption exceeds biocapacity, the authors claim that humans exceed the regenerative capacity of terrestrial ecosystems. This year, they estimate that men use natural resources 1.7 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate – or, in other words, consuming 1.7.
For example, the ecological footprint for France is 4.7 global hectares per person. the biocapacity is 1.7 hectare per person. Therefore, it would take (4.7 / 1.7 =) 2.8 Land if everyone lived like the French
What is he counting?
However, there are some fundamental and misleading deficiencies in these calculations. In a 2013 article, six academic writers, The Nature Conservancy and California's Breakthrough Institute analyzed the impact of the ecological footprint. According to them, it mainly measures the carbon footprint of humans, but does not address other key impacts.
To calculate ecological footprints, the Global Footprint Network estimates the supply and demand for renewable resources on six types of land use: forests, cropland, pastures, managed land and the forest area needed to offset human carbon emissions – that is, the carbon footprint. According to the network analysis, each of these types of land use is almost balanced or in surplus, with the exception of the carbon footprint.
The two main categories of food production – cultivated land and pastures – are defined in such a way that they can never be deficient. And the analysis does not reflect the environmental consequences of the human use of these lands, such as soil erosion, nutrient runoff or over-exploitation of water. It measures only the area of land.
For example, the ecological footprint for Indonesia is 1.61 global hectare per person, which is one of the lowest 30 percent of all countries. But according to a 2014 study, Indonesia has the highest rate of deforestation in the world
In addition, calculating the footprint does not consider whether natural resource stocks are decreasing or increasing as a result of human consumption. This question is essential for understanding ecological impacts.
These calculations of the national ecological footprint also confuse sustainability with self-sufficiency. They assume that each nation should produce all the resources that it consumes, even though it may be cheaper for countries to import certain goods than to produce them at home.
For example, the network lists Canada as an "ecological creditor" whose biocapacity exceeds the ecological footprint of its population. However, Canada ranks among the top 10 oil producing countries in the world and exports a large portion of this oil for foreign consumption. Most of it goes to the United States, an "ecological debtor" that consumes more resources than it produces.
For generic "resources", everyone is better off when debtor countries can import resources from countries with reserves to save. There are real and significant environmental impacts associated with oil production and consumption, but network calculations do not address them. Nor do they reflect the decline in natural capital due to the extraction of a non-renewable resource.
Measuring Sustainability
The Global Footprint Network states that "you can not manage what you do not measure". it may not be possible to create a single measurement capable of capturing all human impacts on the environment. Earthquake Day highlights unsustainable uses of natural resources, but we need robust ecological indicators to inform environmental policy and a broader understanding of ecological risks.
Better sustainability measures should reflect changes in our natural capital supply. uncertainty and integrate multiple pathways to reduce carbon footprints. The best tool for measuring human impacts on the planet can be a scoreboard of environmental indicators, not a footprint.
Learn more:
China, United States and Qatar selected for Earth Overshoot Day
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