Transcript for Mathis Wackernagel: The Ecological Footprint

global oneness project The Ecolological Footprint The ecolological footprint is a resource accounting tool. So, like we have accounting tools for money that we want to know how much money do we earn and how much money do we spend in order to know to what extent our assets Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D., Oakland, CA, Co-Creator Ecological Footprint, Executive Director Global Footprint Network are going up or down, we have the same need with our resources. Like any nation--I think it is more important to know for nations how much ecologic capacity they have available and how much they use rather than knowing how much gold they have in the national banks because in the end what we really depend on is natural capital, the ecologically productive force of nature. And so the ecological footprint is a resource accounting tool very much for this natural capital. So it does this both on the income side--or on the supply side-- to find out how much ecological productive capacity is available, and we do that in number of hecters--or acres for Americans--are available in a region or on the planet that provide these kinds of services. These areas are forest areas, pasture areas, crop areas, fisheries, but also the urban areas, which partially are built over, but mostly stand on the most productive land that we have on this planet. So, that's what we have available. Then we can compare what we have available against what we use. Like if you have a farm--it's obvious--some milk, that takes a cow to graze, so this area necessary to provide for the cow that they provide some milk that I will eventually consume. So, in the same way for all resources we can find out how much area is necessary to provide the resources that are consumed for fibers, food, energy, waste absorption, etc. that adds up to---like a spread farm around the world. Like by--I don't know--by 9 o'clock in the morning probably I have already visited about 3 continents like for the--I may wear some wool from New Zealand sheep. I may drink some coffee from Colombia. I may eat some wheat from--I don't know--the midwestern United States. So, all these pieces are used by me to provide the resources that I consume. So, we can do a resource balance for myself so we can find out how much ecologic capacity I use. We can do it for a whole nation. When we do it for the world as a whole what we see is on average we have about 1.8 hecters of ecologically productive space available on this planet, or in American measures that would be about 4.4 acres of ecologically productive space. That includes also productive sea space. And then we can compare that wtih how much we use. Our global accounts, or global average, shows that we use about 5.5 acres, or 2.2 hecters, of ecologically productive space or about 25% more than what is available. Now you would ask how is it possible to use more space than what we have available? And essentially it is the same as how can we spend more money than what we earn? Of course that is possible for some time because we deplete our assets. In the same way we can cut, for example, trees more rapidly than the re-grow. So, if you assume you had 1 acre of forest, and we use the forest, we harvest timber from that forest at twice the rate of what the forest regenerates, that is like using double the area at the regenerative rate. So the footprint of the product would be 2 acres rather by capacity it would be 1 acre. In this case you would use twice the capacity of what we have available. If we look at all the resource flows combined together that humanity demands today-- actually, the last number is 2003--our conclusion comes to that we use about 30% more or 25% more than what nature has available. And what is the effect? We call that over-shoot. That we use resources more rapidly leads to an ecological debt and accumulation of ecological debt--like for example accumulation of Co2 in the atmosphere, deforestation, soil loss, or overuse of fresh water resources, etc. So, overall, like with money--in the long run we cannot spend more than what we earn otherwise we go towards bankruptcy, and that's what the ecolological footprint tries to avoid, helping humanity and nation by nation to avoid ecological bankruptcy. Now bankruptcy is a serious concern in the financial world. I would say in the ecological world it is even more serious because in financial bankruptcy you can move out again later on and kind of re-build your life, but ecological bankruptcy is very hard to move out of because ecological assets are the underlying wealth on which any other wealth depends. www.globalonenessproject.org.