LIVING PLANET REPORT

Global Footprint Network

New Data Shows Humanity’s Ecological Debt Compounding

At the current rate humanity is using natural resources and producing waste, we will soon require the resources of two planets to meet our demands, according to figures released in October 2008 by the Global Footprint Network. The data comes at a critical time, as the economic crisis felt around the globe has made it painstakingly clear: Debt and overspending can continue for a while but ultimately have dire consequences. Meeting this level of demand is likely to be physically impossible, and will likely cause ecosystem failures that will threaten the economic underpinnings of our society.

Our demand on nature, along with our economy, is reaching a critical tipping point.
“Continued ecological deficit spending will have severe economic consequences,” said Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, executive director of Global Footprint Network. “Resource limitations and ecosystem collapses will cause food and energy costs to skyrocket, while the value of long-term investments will plummet.”

The information is part of comprehensive new data from Global Footprint Network exploring the changing state of human pressure on the planet and how it compares across 200 nations. A summary of the findings are presented in the Living Planet Report 2008, produced with WWF and the Zoological Society of London. Complete country-by-country graphs, data tables, sources and methodology are available in The Ecological Footprint Atlas 2008. The details of these reports can be found at www.footprintnetwork.org

Living Beyond our Means

The Living Planet Report 2008 reports that in 2005, humanity's Ecological Footprint was 31% larger than the planet's capacity to produce these resources. This ecological "overshoot" means that it now takes about one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year. Overshoot has increased by 5% since the last Living Planet Report, which was based on 2001 data. The carbon dioxide Footprint, which accounts for the use of fossil fuels, is almost half the total global Footprint, and is its fastest growing component, increasing more than eleven fold from 1961 to 2005. "Humanity is living off its ecological credit card," said Dr. Wackernagel. "While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to liquidation of the planet's ecological assets, and the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and agricultural land upon which our economy depends."

How Countries Compare

Three quarters of the human population today live in countries that are “ecological debtors,” demanding more biocapacity than they have within their borders.

Comparing Ecological Footprints across countries and cultures offers some revealing insights. The average person’s Ecological Footprint in the United States is 24 acres. The average per capita footprint among European Union residents is 12 acres, exactly half that of the average American. But it is still well above the 5 acres the Global Footprint Network calculates to be available per person.

Conversely, Haiti, Afghanistan and Malawi are the countries with the smallest Ecological Footprints, less than 1 acre per person, in most cases, too small to meet basic requirements for food, shelter, infrastructure and sanitation. In many poor, low-Footprint countries, increasing population is contributing to high overall resource consumption, posing clear risks to those countries’ ability to pull their citizens out of poverty, or to have a stable society.

China is now on parity with the U.S. in terms of its pressure on the world’s resources. China and the U.S. each require 21% of global biocapacity—together almost half of all human demand on nature’s services. China’s resource use is rising at a much faster rate due to population growth, suggesting it will soon surpass the U.S. in total consumption, although the U.S. remains much higher per person.

Losing Biological Diversity

Biodiversity loss is continuing apace, in spite of a pledge by the world’s governments to significantly reduce the rate of decline. Shrinking biodiversity is in large part a factor of increasing human demand on the planet’s resources. “To understand what is left for wild species, we need to understand what people are taking for themselves. We are one species, but there are 10 million others,” Dr Wackernagel said. “If other species are to survive, we must share the bounty.”

Five major threats to biodiversity are identified, all a consequence of human numbers and activities. These are: habitat loss, fragmentation or change, especially due to agriculture; overexploitation of species, such as overfishing; pollution; climate change; and the spread of invasive species. Human consumption patterns—energy use, timber, paper and fuelwood production, and fish, meat and crop consumption—translate directly into these threats.

The report warns that humanity faces serious consequences—including threats to our food, medicine and clean water supplies and increased exposure to natural disaster—if current trends continue. It calls on leaders to take immediate action to reduce the growing human pressures on natural ecosystems.

Balancing Our Budget with Nature

The effects of ecological overshoot are already being keenly felt in a way that is beginning to cause economic shifts. Climate change, deforestation, water and food shortages are all results of our ecological overspending.

But despite these challenges, there are key opportunities to reverse these trends: creating resource-efficient cities and infrastructure, fostering best-practice green technology and innovation, and making resource limits central to decision making—of which ecological accounting plays a crucial role. In just three years, Global Footprint Network has initiated projects in 23 nations, including Switzerland, Japan, Belgium, and France to evaluate the ecological bottom line. And the government of the country with the largest per capita Footprint, the United Arab Emirates, has launched a national initiative to understand and reduce its resource consumption.

“As we look toward an increasingly resource constrained future,” Dr Wackernagel said, “the societies that fare the best will be those that invest in the green economy—like renewable energy and compact urban development. Investing in women is another strategy to slow down or even reverse population growth while increasing the health and educational outcome of our children. Such efforts can not only help the nations that adopt them, but can begin the pivotal process of reducing our global Footprint and securing human well-being and the natural resources on which this depends.”

Global Footprint Network was established to enable a sustainable future where all people have the opportunity to live satisfying lives within the means of one planet. Join them at www.footprintnetwork.org