Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Ecological footprinting acts, in effect, as an ecological camera - each analysis
provides a snapshot of our current demands on nature, a portrait of how things
stand right now under prevailing technology and social values. We believe that
this in itself is an important contribution. We show that humanity has exceeded
carrying capacity and that some people contribute significantly more to this
ecological 'overshoot' than do others. Ecological footprinting also estimates by
how much we have to reduce our consumption, improve our technology or
change our behaviour to achieve sustainability.
(Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 231)
Additionally, ecological footprinting does not indicate how trade may reduce
incentives for material resource conservation by facilitating and reinforcing urban
dependences on other territories, as resources are basically sought further afield. This
becomes especially apparent when trade and natural flows in contemporary
relationships between the North and the South are examined:
Much of the wealth of urban industrial countries comes from the exploitation
(and sometimes liquidation) of natural capital, not only within their own
territories, but also within their former colonies. The energy and material flows
in trade thus represent a form of thermodynamic imperialism. The low-cost
essergy [essential energy] represented by commodity imports is required to sustain
growth and maintain the internal order of the so-called 'advanced economies'
of the urban North. . . . Colonialism involved the forceful appropriation of
extraterritorial carrying capacity, but today economic purchasing power secures
the same resource flows. What used to require territorial occupation is now
achieved through commerce.
(Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 239)
The authors conclude that urban policy should aim to minimize disruption of
ecosystem processes and reduce energy and material consumption. For McManus
and Haughton (2006), as an indicator of impact, ecological footprinting decon-
textualizes place and natural diversity, by suggesting that everything can be reduced
to one common metric, and may actually narrow our understanding of sustainable
development, despite raising our general awareness. The same may actually be said
for the current emphasis on carbon reduction. For Newman (2006), it may help
frame environmental management and sustainable development policies, but has
difficulties in assessing detailed priorities as to what needs to be reduced first or even
by how much - for example, a city's use of water, energy or land. However, since
the work in the early 1990s, methods of ecological footprint analysis have been
refined and the extent to which the world's population is overshooting the biosphere's
capacity is becoming clearer. Ecofootprinting does provide possibilities for comparing
a variety of sustainability options and project choices in business, technological and
industrial production processes, policy scenarios for development, population and
consumption, urban design and regeneration, and so on. It can be applied to testing
such things as the role of efficiency gains in reducing resource consumption, the
relationship between income and ecological impact, dematerialization of economies,
the relationship between economic and ecological debt, the link between population
health and resource throughput, and transition to a solar economy, and provides a
