Footprint Network Blog - Carbon Footprint
The spectacular 40 percent crash in oil prices that began in July and accelerated in October has focused the world’s attention once again on the "master commodity" and its far-reaching effects on the global economy. Unfortunately, much of the media coverage has revolved around nationalistic narratives that have little bearing on the facts.
Given oil’s significant role in today’s economies and its interplay with both biocapacity and Ecological Footprint pressures, we wanted to share our view on:
• why oil prices are down;
• when and why might they go back up; and
• who gets hurt and who wins.
Charged up by activists mobilizing for the UN Climate Summit in New York next week, we delved into our carbon Footprint data to see if we could shed light on the very intractable debates swirling around nations’ responsibilities for reducing emissions. In the first graph below, our intrepid research analyst David Zimmerman found while EU countries toot their horns about declining emissions (as represented by the blue line below), the picture is not so simple.
Here’s what David discovered after creating an index starting at 1993: EU emissions are actually increasing (except for a 2009 recession dip) when you account for all emissions resulting from consumption by EU residents (as shown in the red line). The measurement includes goods produced outside the EU but ultimately consumed inside its borders, and excludes goods produced within the EU that are consumed outside its borders.
In a second graphic, David compared carbon emissions within a nation’s borders (domestic carbon emissions) to carbon emissions embodied in national consumption, which includes carbon associated with the production of goods outside the nation that were ultimately consumed inside the nation’s borders.
Given that Swiss residents consume four times more than Swiss ecosystems can regenerate, what should the nation do to stay competitive?
That was the question that Global Footprint Network and partner BAKBASEL was charged with addressing in a new report launching Sept. 16.
The objective of the study, commissioned by Switzerland’s Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) and four other ministries, was to establish the impact on Swiss competitiveness of current resource trends.
The report's findings will be unveiled Sept. 16 in Bern to spark debate at the fifth public town hall event of Dialog Nachhaltige Entwicklung Schweiz ("Dialogue on Sustainable Development in Switzerland"), a program sponsored by ARE.
Media outlets around the world helped share the news of Earth Overshoot Day this year, and thanks to countless partners and supporters, a conversation about our planet’s ecological deficit also took off on social media.
Earth Overshoot Day is an annual observance meant to bring attention to the risks of humanity’s growing ecological deficit. This year, August 19 marked the date when humanity exhausted nature’s budget for the entire year.
Highlights of Earth Overshoot Day 2014 media coverage included articles in Le Monde in France, El Mundo in Spain, and the Brasil Post in Brazil. Earth Overshoot Day also made the front page of La Stampa in Italy for the second year in a row. An online article in The Guardian in the UK generated 92 comments. In Switzerland, a Q&A with Bruno Oberle, director of the Swiss Ministry of Environment, was featured on the ministry’s website.
May and June this year were the hottest ever since record-keeping began in 1880, according to a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report. 2014 could go down as the warmest year yet, exceeding the previous records set in 2003 and 2013.
There’s no question that the Earth is warming, ancient ice is melting and sea levels are rising. Friends of Global Footprint Network are well aware of many of the risks that anthropogenic climate change poses, particularly to the world’s poorest regions.
A risk that remains under-appreciated, however, is the impact that water availability will have on energy, and that constrained energy supply will have on water.
After food production, electricity generation is the second-largest consumer of water globally. Thermal power plants – those powered by coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear – consume vast amounts of water in their cooling cycles. A single nuclear reactor can consume over 15 million gallons of water per day. Power generation accounts for 41 percent of freshwater withdrawals and about three percent of freshwater consumption (3.3 billion gallons of water per day) in the United States.
Global Footprint Network is thrilled to announce that Co-Founder and President Dr. Mathis Wackernagel and Dr. William Rees, co-creators of the Ecological Footprint, have been named the winners of the 2012 Kenneth E. Boulding Award, the world’s top honor in the field of ecological economics.
The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE), made the announcement leading up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), in Rio de Janeiro, where the awards will be presented.
The biennial award is given to “outstanding individuals who have contributed original and seminal approaches that have furthered our understanding of the interfaces between the social, ecological, ethical, economic and political dimensions of our world,” said the ISEE in announcing the award.
Building on Rees’ earlier work on human carrying capacity, Wackernagel and Rees in the early 1990s developed the Ecological Footprint, the world’s premier resource accounting system, to track humanity’s demands on nature. The Ecological Footprint measures the area of productive land and water, or “biocapacity,” required to produce the resources a human population consumes and to absorb its carbon waste.
For the last 10 years, Global Footprint Network has contributed to WWF’s bi-annual flagship publication “The Living Planet Report,” which has become a key publication for Ecological Footprint results. The 2012 edition was released in May from the International Space Station, generating the largest media response of any Living Planet Report so far. The latest Global Footprint Network calculations show that humanity’s demand for bio-resources exceeds the long-term regenerative capacity of Earth by over 50 percent.
“Ever more countries continue to use more resources than they can renew within their own boundaries,” Drs. Wackernagel and Rees said. “Until countries begin tracking and managing their biocapacity deficits, they put not only themselves at risk but, more importantly, the entire planet.”
The award will be presented at the ISEE Conference 2012 in Rio de Janeiro on June 19, where Wackernagel and Rees will deliver the keynote Boulding Award lectures.
Dr. Wackernagel has promoted sustainability on six continents and lectured at more than 100 universities. Dr. Rees is an ecologist, ecological economist, Founding Director of the One Earth Initiative, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993) was President of the American Economics Association and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Past notable recipients include Herman Daly (American economist, considered the father of Ecological Economics) and Manfred Max-Neef, author of Real-Life Economics: Understanding Wealth Creation.
We thank you, our valued partners and supporters, for helping to promote our work around the world, and making awards such as these possible as we continue to make ecological limits central to decision-making.
Given humanity’s increasing demands on Earth’s resources, it’s never too early to start teaching the next generation lessons about sustainability and our Ecological Footprint.
One of most effective ways to learn is through story. A brother and sister team, Cecilia and Gyula Simonyi, have created Children of the Elements, a series of illustrated interactive stories for the iPad. They envision the app as a tool for parents to tackle the complex subject with their children. Cecilia and Gyula have worked with their father, who is the founder and President of the BOCS Foundation in Hungary, a Global Footprint Network partner organization.
Children of the Element is an educational app, hand-painted on 40 screens and presented in English and Hungarian. The app provokes thinking systematically about sustainability by exploring food, transportation, energy, technology, consumption, population and related issues, and weaving them into stories that show their interconnectedness.
Cecilia and Gyula have launched a campaign on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise funds to fully develop the series and reach a wider audience. While aimed for children ages 8 years and older, the stories are no doubt entertaining and edifying for adults as well. It follows four young children as they explore their world, giving readers an opportunity to make decisions for each character. Each episode addresses a different sustainability topic. Funds raised through the Kickstarter campaign will be used for a programmer, music, and special-effects.
“Our goal is to introduce the true face of sustainability, the complexity, the far-reaching impacts and reactions, and offer this in a format understandable and enjoyable by children,” says Gyula, the project manager. “With this series we hope to trigger real understanding, rather than oversimplifying (with) messages like ‘don’t litter.’ Our goal is to stimulate questions, generate discussion and inspire change in choices our readers make.
“Being a mother, I feel the most important knowledge I can give my child is how to live in harmony with our planet,” says Cecilia, author and illustrator of the stories, and mother of a 4-year-old. “Children growing up today are going to face all the challenges our generation have left behind for them to solve.”
Kickstarter allows backers to pledge various amounts to support the creative projects of their choice. If the project reaches its pledge goal by the end of the funding period, the pledges are collected and sent to the project team. However, if the full amount is not raised by the deadline, no money changes hands. On Kickstarter, backers are not only donating money to a project that inspires them, but their pledge is honored with special gifts the project creator offers.
To watch the campaign video and help make the full Children of the Elements series happen, visit their Kickstarter page. And stay up to date by visiting their Facebook page and Cecilia’s blog, which has new illustrations.
Editors update (July 3, 2012): The Kickstarter campaign is over, but the project is not. Follow the progress on the Children of the Elements blog.
The joint project between the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Global Footprint Network to assess the financial materiality of ecological risk was launched at the UN Foundation in Washington DC on 17 October 2011. Opening remarks from Paul Clements-Hunt (Head of UNEP FI) and Susan Burns (Senior Vice President of Global Footprint Network) showed a clear commitment from both organisations to this potentially ground breaking project. Richard Burrett, of Earth Capital Partners, also gave an inspiring presentation detailing not only the importance of this project but also how investors currently perceive the financial relevance of natural resources.
It is clear that the tightening constraints on resources and their potential impacts on national economies are not included within current financial analysis. Yet such factors are thought to have growing implications for the long-term credit risk of many government bonds, especially those with long-dated maturities.
A host of financial institutions were in attendance at the launch and participated in a stimulating discussion around the evidence base to show that ecological risks are becoming material for economies and how key ecological data can be linked to the financial and economic indicators. This project will endeavour to shine a light on such questions to explore the role of natural resource accounting in strengthening risk models for government bonds.
Global Footprint Network and UNEP FI would like to thank all those who participated in the launch event and invite any other institutions who are interested to join the project.
Humanity has reached a new milestone as we hit 7 billion. Never before have there been 7 billion people on planet earth, all at the same time. As we welcome the 7th billion global inhabitant, we also acknowledge the challenges we will face due to a burgeoning population explosion, resource depletion, food and water scarcity and overcrowded cities. This is especially true at a time when humanity as a whole is already using the planets regenerative capacity 50 percent faster than it can renew.
Although humanity’s total demand is unsustainable, this consumption is very unevenly distributed among the 7 billion people. A large portion of humanity does not have enough resources to secure even their most basic subsistence needs. This suffering is intolerable. It affects the rest of humanity, too, most visibly through conflict and instability.
Therefore, Global Footprint Network is mapping how much nature we have, how much we use, and who uses what. In a crowded, resource constrained world this information helps decision makers understand our present resource situation and find options for avoiding unpleasant consequences.
Global Footprint Network is the standard setting body for the only Ecological Footprint standards in the world. The Ecological Footprint standards set forth quality criteria for Ecological Footprint studies of sub-national populations, organizations, and products. The goal of the Ecological Footprint Standards is to build consensus among practitioners regarding Ecological Footprint methodology, transparency, and communications. This consensus is important because it helps to establish a forum or a common platform for understanding and communicating about natural resource constraints. To that end, the Ecological Footprint Standards are used as a way of maintaining the scientific credibility and accuracy of Ecological Footprint studies, the policy relevance, and the consistency and appropriateness with which the method is applied and findings communicated.
Global Footprint Network’s Ecological Footprint Standards have been established through a committee-based process that incorporates input from our Partnership Network and Public Comment. The Global Footprint Network Standards Committee is starting the process to review and revise the Ecological Footprint Standards. Participation in the Committee and Procedures for the Committee are outlined in Global Footprint Network Committees Charter. The result of this process will be updates to the 2009 Ecological Footprint Standards to be released towards the end of 2012.
Improving comparability The original goal of the Ecological Footprint Standards is to increase the quality, reliability and consistency of Footprint assessments. As the Ecological Footprint is being adopted by a growing number of government agencies, organizations and communities as a measure of environmental performance, there is an even greater need for quality, consistency, and reliability. This review and revision process for the 2012 Ecological Footprint Standards is a way to maintain this goal of improving comparability.
In addition, as the Ecological Footprint methodology is applied in different circumstances by different practitioners, advances to the methodology and communications strategies are being made. Conducting a review and revision process every three years allows Global Footprint Network to stay on top of advances in Ecological Footprint science and application. By engaging with experts, our Partner Network, and public comment every three years, our Ecological Footprint Standards can allow for a dynamic process that encourages innovation and action.
Your feedback is welcome during the entire process! Before the revised Standards are finalized in 2012, there will be two 60-day Public Review periods, one in March – May 2012 and the second in July – September 2012. These are your opportunities to provide more input as the draft develops.