Initiative
Global Footprint Network

Some descriptive material about the Global Footprint Network ... and initiative to deploy sustainability accounting

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Footprint Basics - Overview

Humanity needs what nature provides, but how do we know how much we’re using and how much we have to use?

The Ecological Footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. This accounting system tracks, on the demand side (Footprint), how much land and water area a human population uses to provide all it takes from nature. This includes the areas for producing the resource it consumes, the space for accommodating its buildings and roads, and the ecosystems for absorbing its waste emissions such as carbon dioxide. These calculations account for each year’s prevailing technology, as productivity and technological efficiency change from year to year. The accounting system also tracks the supply of nature: it documents how much biologically productive area is available to provide these services (biocapacity ). Therefore, these accounts are able to compare human demand against nature’s supply of biocapacity.

Our current global situation: Since the 1970s, humanity has been in ecological overshoot with annual demand on resources exceeding what Earth can regenerate each year.

It now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.

We maintain this overshoot by liquidating the Earth’s resources. Overshoot is a vastly underestimated threat to human well-being and the health of the planet, and one that is not adequately addressed.

By measuring the Footprint of a population—an individual, city, business, nation, or all of humanity—we can assess our pressure on the planet, which helps us manage our ecological assets more wisely and take personal and collective action in support of a world where humanity lives within the Earth’s bounds.

Conceived in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia, the Ecological Footprint is now in wide use by scientists, businesses, governments, agencies, individuals, and institutions working to monitor ecological resource use and advance sustainable development.

Businesses that look ahead and actively manage their ecological risks and opportunities can gain a strong competitive advantage.

The Ecological Footprint is being used to help corporations improve their market foresight, set strategic direction, manage performance and communicate their strengths.

By providing a common unit, the Footprint helps business to establish benchmarks, set quantitative targets and evaluate alternatives for future activities. The Footprint is compatible with all scales of company operations, and provides both aggregated and detailed results.

Ecological Footprint analysis reveals where regions, industrial sectors and companies will face increasing limits in resources such as energy, forest, croplands, pastures and fisheries. It also helps identify strategies that will succeed in a resource-constrained world, including products and services that will be most needed in the future.

Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about working with Global Footprint Network to incorporate the Ecological Footprint into your strategic decision-making framework.

The international debt crisis that has roiled world markets in recent years has challenged long-held assumptions of how to best measure a country’s wealth and gage its economic stability.

Monitoring social and economic variables alone, a growing number of investors now understand, is no longer enough to understand nations’ competitiveness. In a resource-constrained world, a critical component of economic success will be through careful biocapacity management. But until now there has been no methodology that enables credit rating agencies, investors and financial information providers to integrate such ecological data in their respective risk models.

In October 2011, Global Footprint Network launched a two-year project with the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and leading financial institutions to investigate the links between ecological and financial risks at the country level, and introduce more ecologically informed risk analysis into the market.

On November 19, 2012, the key findings of the E-RISC: A New Angle on Sovereign Credit Risk report were unveiled at an interactive event hosted by Bloomberg in London. The report found that a ten percent variation in commodity prices can lead to changes in a country’s trade balance equivalent to 0.5 percent of GDP. Further, a ten per cent reduction in the productive capacity of soils and freshwater areas alone could lead to a reduction in trade balance equivalent to over 4 per cent of GDP. (Download report as a 5MB .pdf)

Bloomberg will also now be offering Global Footprint Network’s country-level natural resource risk data (National Footprint Accounts) on all its terminals. The data will help users integrate natural resource risk into sovereign debt, economic growth and company valuation models.

Through Ecological Footprint resource accounting and other analyses, Global Footprint Network and its partners can measure a nation’s true assets and deficits—the wealth and vulnerabilities that are not currently included in credit risk models and government bond ratings. This is data that’s critically important to the finance industry.

This ground-breaking project substantiates the business case for financial institutions and ratings agencies to include ecological criteria as a key component of country risk analysis. The E-RISC report fills a methodology gap by exploring to what extent resource and ecological risks can impact a nation’s economy and how these factors affect a nation’s ability to pay its debts.

Please contact Martin Halle (martin.halle@footprintnetwork.org), a Global Footprint Network policy analyst, to learn more about the Global Footprint Network and UNEP FI project, Environmental Risk in Sovereign Credits (E-RISC): A New Angle on Sovereign Credit Risk

Why track resource consumption and natural capital?

Local governments succeed by helping all their residents live fulfilling lives, both today and in the future. The availability of natural capital, nature’s ability to renew and provide resources and services, is not the only ingredient in this vision. However, without natural capital – healthy food, energy for mobility and heat, fibre for paper, clothing and shelter, fresh air and clean water – such a vision is impossible. Thus, providing current and future human well-being depends on protecting natural capital from systematic overuse; otherwise, nature will no longer be able to secure society with these basic services.*

What’s in it for local governments?

Ecological Footprint accounts allow governments to track a city or region’s demand on natural capital, and to compare this demand with the amount of natural capital actually available. The accounts also give governments the ability to answer more specific questions about the distribution of these demands within their economy. In other words, it gives them information about their resource metabolism.

To learn more about cities that have calculated their Ecological Footprint, we invite you to read our Case Stories.

For example, Footprint accounts reveal the ecological demand associated with residential consumption, the production of value-added products, and the generation of exports. They also help assess the ecological capacity embodied in the imports upon which a region depends. This can shed light on the region’s constraints or future liabilities in comparison with other regions of the world, and identify opportunities to defend or improve the local quality of life. Footprint accounts help governments become more specific about sustainability in a number of ways. The accounts provide a common language and a clearly defined methodology that can be used to support staff training and to communicate about sustainability issues with other levels of government or with the public.

Footprint accounts add value to existing data sets on production, trade and environmental performance by providing a comprehensive way to interpret them. For instance, the accounts can help guide “environmental management systems” by offering a framework for gathering and organizing data, setting targets and tracking progress. The accounts can also serve as environmental reporting requirements, and inform strategic decision-making for regional economic development.

The global effort for sustainability will be won, or lost, in the world’s cities, where urban design may influence over 70 percent of people’s Ecological Footprint. High-Footprint cities can reduce this demand on nature greatly with existing technology. Many of these savings also cut costs and make cities more livable. Since urban infrastructure is long-lasting and influences resource needs for decades to come, infrastructure decisions make or break a city’s future. Which cities are building future resource traps? Which ones are building opportunities for resource efficient and more competitive lifestyles?

Without regional resource accounting, governments can easily overlook or fail to realize the extent of these kinds of opportunities and threats. The Ecological Footprint, a comprehensive, science-based resource accounting system that compares people’s use of nature with nature’s ability to regenerate, helps eliminate this blind spot.

San Francisco, CA (USA) In 2010 Global Footprint Network joined forces with the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) to calculate the Ecological Footprint of San Francisco residents and the city as a whole. With urban design and infrastructure having a major influence on its residents’ Ecological Footprints, the goal of the project was to expand the thinking and knowledge around urban living and sustainability. The completed footprint study (download the PDF) found that the average San Franciscan’s overall footprint was about 6 percent higher than the average American’s. The study revealed one of the paradoxes of Footprint trends in modern cities: while density and public transportation options significantly reduce per capita Footprint, the increased affluence of city residents correlates with increased consumption. A $1000 increase in expenditure is expected, on average, to correlate with a 0.09 gha per capita increase in Ecological Footprint. A 100 people per square mile increase in population density is associated with a 0.06 gha per capita decrease in the Ecological Footprint. (Read more about the study.)

*Text from this page was written by Global Footprint Network staff and much of it has since been published. Citation: Wackernagel et al. 2006. The Ecological Footprint of cities and regions; Comparing resource availability with resource demand. Environment and Urbanization 18(1): 103–112.

How much land area does it take to support your lifestyle? Take this quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what you can do to tread more lightly on the earth.

Take the Quiz

The Footprint calculator offers an interactive, fun way for people to explore and reduce their Footprint. Built in partnership with Free Range Studios, the calculator received generous support from EPA Victoria, the Foundation for a Global Community, the City of Calgary, and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. The calculator is based on data from Global Footprint Network's National Footprint Accounts.*

While the current version is based on data specifically for the U.S. and Australia, Global Footprint Network is developing an enhanced, data-rich version which will enable people around the world to calculate their Footprints with data specific to their region.

Global Footprint Network is inviting corporate, government and NGO partners to help launch the calculator worldwide. The calculator can be customized for specific organizations and geographical areas, and upcoming enhancements will include social networking opportunities and interactive features. If you would like to be involved or would like the calculator customized for your organization, please send an email to calculators@footprintnetwork.org

*These data are used by NGOs such as IUCN and WWF, national governments such as the Governments of Japan, Switzerland and Canada, as well as financial institutions such as Pictet Bank, Sarasin Bank and Portfolio 21 Investments. Decisions about the data and methods used for the National Accounts are guided by a consensus, committee-based process for the ongoing scientific review of the methodology.

Partnership is open to organizations that are aligned with Global Footprint Network’s mission and that wish to be part of a global community of experts and thought leaders in the Ecological Footprint and sustainability issues. Participating partners receive access to a leveraged Network of rich Ecological Footprint expertise and Global Footprint Network scientific and communications support. Participating partners also commit to using the Ecological Footprint in accordance with the standards.

Global Footprint Network invites organizations with shared goals to partner with us in strengthening the Footprint and enhancing its value as a catalyst for sustainability. Through the participation of our partners we:

• Coordinate research;
• Update and strengthen the National Footprint Accounts;
• Standardize methodologies;
• Extend the Footprint into new domains;
• Share tools;
• Build the technical capacity of footprint practitioners and
• Develop strategic initiatives that benefit the entire sustainability community.

Joining Global Footprint Network connects you with a growing group of leading organizations, gives you access to the latest Ecological Footprinting materials and tools, and provides opportunities for international collaboration.

Our Partner Network facilitates the exchange of ideas and resources among diverse organizations with shared goals. It offers a forum for innovation and adaptation while allowing the organizations invested in it to thrive in a fast-changing world.

Partners are recognized as leaders in ecological resource accounting and sustainability, and play a vital role in advancing the science of sustainability through collaborative Footprint projects.

Tangible Benefits Include:

• Preferential rate access to our Global Footprint Network technical team members, experts in the methodology behind the National Footprint Accounts, and the standards for applying the methodology to a wide-range of Ecological Footprint projects. You will also receive guidance from the technical team to support your Footprint strategy, analyses and/or campaigns.
• Eligibility for nomination to technical review and policy committees, helping to shape the future direction of the methodological standards and National Footprint Accounts research.
• Access to Footprint Forum, our partners-only intranet site. This will allow you to review draft standards, share strategies for using the Footprint more effectively, discuss approaches to technical questions, and develop strategic alliances with other organizations.
• Invitations to conferences and gatherings that are exclusive, invitation-only events.
• A basic license at a preferential rate to use the National Footprint Accounts. Partners receive a single use license for one country’s national accounts with historical points of that country in 10-year intervals.
• Support from our communications team for boilerplate language and Ecological Footprint communications advice at a preferential rate.
• Invitations to participate in global campaigns, such as Earth Overshoot Day, an international media campaign for which Global Footprint Network provides comprehensive outreach materials and which partners can customize to their own efforts and events.
• Discounts on trainings, materials and general support services.
• Recognition on the Network’s website. Your logo and a short description of your organization will appear on our website.

Global Footprint Network partners are required to comply with the most recent Ecological Footprint standards and the partner responsibilities detailed in our Partnership Agreement. Please contact us for more details.
Open PDF with partnership details (Version October 2009)

Contact CEO
Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D.
President, Global Footprint Network

If your organization is interested in joining us as a partner, please fill out a PARTNERSHIP APPLICATION and email it along with the signed partner agreement to us at partner@footprintnetwork.org. Please also note that this is an application process and completion of the form does not ensure partnership. If you have any questions about partnership or the application process, please feel free to contact us. Thank you!