Assessing Our Ecological Footprint
The race for sustainability will be won or lost in cities, where urban design influences over 70 percent of people's Ecological Footprint.
Finally making the connection between first and second costs is what powered the idea of sustainable design and construction into the forefront of the construction industry. Capital costs, or first costs of green building, were perceived to outweigh the expected lower cost of traditional building in both design and materials. Second costs, or building operational costs, were only understood fully when studies were done on some early green buildings that proved that over time high-performance buildings were very much cheaper to operate and gave a substantial ROI in a relatively short period of time, at the then much cheaper energy costs. Studies also proved that higher productivity from employees in these buildings was an added value to high-performance design.
Empirical data became the selling point of "why a green building." Earnest Callenbach, a Berkeley, CA, progressive thinker, first proposed the concept of an "ecological footprint." The footprint was a term of relative measurement to qualify the amount of earth's surface required to house, feed, cloth, transport and dispose of waste created of a society, person or nation. Using his concept the current demand by earth's people requires almost six planets to supply the needs of its population.
In a quest for indicators of how well a given society is faring or healing, the ecological footprint is a measurement tool with new devotees. But first some facts to better under- stand the concept and how it will help power healthy cities into the standard of planning, development and construction.
What is an EF? It is a tangible management and communications tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use and who uses what. It represents the amount of biological productive land and water a population (an individual, a city or country or all of humanity) requires to provide the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste using prevailing technology.
The human economy is embedded in the biosphere and is entirely dependent on its ecological services. In consuming nature's products and services, people have an impact on the Earth. But since nature has the ability to renew, it can cope with human demand as long as this demand stays within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere.
Ecological Footprint accounting documents the extent to which human economies stay within the regenerative capacity of the planet, and who uses which portion of this capacity.
Such biophysical resource accounting is possible because resources and waste flows can be tracked, and most of these flows can be associated with the biologically productive areas required to maintain them. The Ecological Footprint of a population is the area of biologically productive land and sea required to produce the resources this population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes it generates, given prevailing technology. Since people use resources from all over the world and pollute far away places with their waste, the Ecological Footprint includes these areas, wherever they happen to be located on the planet.
By measuring the overall supply of and human demand on the Earth's regenerative capacity, the Ecological Footprint provides an indispensable tool for tracking progress, setting targets and driving policies for sustainability.
The average human's EF is 2.2 global hectares (5.5 acres), while there are only 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres) of biologically productive land and sea area per person available on the planet. This overuse is called "overshoot." It is possible to exceed ecological limits for a while, but this "deficit spending" leads to the destruction of ecological assets on which our economy depends, such as depleted ground water, collapsing fisheries, empty oceans and CO 2 accumulation in the atmosphere.
Ecological Footprint comparisons of human demand on nature with nature's regenerative capacity are updated each year. Recent calculations, published in WWF's Living Planet Report, show that the average Australian required more than 7.7 global average hectares (or 19 acres) to provide for his or her consumption. The average Italian lived on a footprint less than half that size (3.8 global hectares or 9 acres). The aver- age Mexican occupies 2.5 global hectares (6 acres), the average Indian lives on 0.8 global hectares (2 acres). Average demand globally is 2.2 hectares per person (5.4 acres).
Maintenance of biodiversity also depends on the 1.8 hectares per person available. Comparison of supply and demand shows that humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeds the Earth's bio-capacity by more than 20 percent (2.2ha/1.8ha = 1.2). In other words, it now takes one year and more than two months to regenerate the resources humanity consumes in one year.
The Ecological Footprint can be applied at scales from single products to households, organizations, cities, regions, nations and humanity as a whole.
Expressed in hectares (1 hectare = 2.5 acres) the average U.S. citizen needs 24 acres or 9.5 hectares to provide for consumption and disposal.
How can cities use the EF? A footprint assessment computes a community's demand on nature in specific, understandable terms, using official government data. Cities can asses their sustainability performance, set realistic targets, monitor projects and programs, communicate successes and, by comparing scenarios, identify implications of policy choices. More than 100 cities around the world have already used the EF to manage their ecological assets and move towards sustainability.
In writing their master plan for including growth and development, cities and counties will now have a supportive and acceptable tool with which to measure and compare the effects and efficiencies of various development directions. Hopefully the redevelopment of the Gulf Coast will be a great opportunity to put this data to work.
The Global Footprint Network (www.footprintnetwork.org) is responsible for gaining profiles in many countries throughout the world. Their mission is to support the shift toward a sustainable economy by advancing the EF as a measurement and management tool that makes reality of global limits central to decision-making throughout the world.
Calculate your own Ecological Footprint at www.ecofoot.org.
January 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue