TRANSCRIPT (691 words, slightly
edited for clarity):
What is ecological footprint analysis
and why is it important?
The ecological footprint is a very simple tool to tell
us how much nature do we have, how much do we use. If we divide
the planet's ecological capacity by the number of people what we
get is about 2 hectares per person. Then we can compare that area
with the area necessary for us to produce food, fibres, absorb CO2,
host our infrastructure. And when we add it up, for example in the
United States, it adds up to roughly 9 to 10 hectares of ecological
capacity to provide for an average American. That means that if
everyone lived like an American, it would take about six planets.
But we only have one! And some of it we should leave for other species.
Now world-wide we already use 20% more than what nature
can regenerate every year. That means every year, we use what nature
takes one year and about two and a bit more months to regenerate.
So overall, we are running on ecological debt.
The footprint helps us to preserve our ecological assets,
by being a way of being able to keep our books, to make sure that
what we spend ecologically does not exceed what we earn. Now we
have no books. Any company that doesn't have its books will go bankrupt
over time. And that's what we are preparing for ecologically. Without
books for our ecological resources we will continue to spend more
than what we get from nature, thereby liquidating our assets. We
need to protect our assets. That's at the core of sustainability.
The ecological footprint helps us to do that.
What about the ecological footprint
of cities?
A huge part of our resources are spent in cities. The
way we build our cities determines how much we'll use cars or public
transportation, how big the houses are, how well they are insulated.
A lot of it is organised through local planning and the way we set
our standards in cities. That's a big opportunity for cities because
cities also spend a lot on building their infrastructure, so at
the same time that we can make our cities much more ecologically
effective we can also reap some of the benefits locally again.
The ecological footprint can be a very useful tool to
monitor whether we actually move in the right direction, because
it helps us to analyse or to summarise how we draw on nature in
a simple comprehensive format. Similar to the GDP, the Gross Domestic
Product that helps us to find out how much money is changing hands
in the economy - very useful in order to look at the health of an
economy - we also need to look at the ecological footprint to look
at the health of the ecosystem services that support our economy.
That we can do not only at the national level or the global level,
we can also do it at the city level or even at the individual level.
When cities start to measure their own ecological footprint, they
have a comprehensive tool to see whether actually they're moving
in the right direction.
Are most cities running ecological
deficits? Presumably footprint analysis shows that most cities are
way ecologically unsustainable at the moment. Is that true?
Obviously cities on their own have a hard time to be
sustainable. For example when we analysed Paris, we found that the
area supporting Paris is about 300 times larger than Paris itself!
Now is that a problem? If there are 300 Paris areas available to
support Paris, obviously not. But we are in a world that is ecologically
constrained. Already today we use 20% more than Earth can regenerate.
So cities is really where the action happens, where we have to find
out how can we use city structures more effectively so all people
can live well within the limited capacity that we have, now roughly
2 hectares of ecological capacity per person world-wide. How can
we build cities that can operate on that budget? That's the big
challenge and that's where we can make a huge contribution.
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