Ecological footprint | How to reduce the ecological footprint?

Ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand for natural capital, such as the amount of nature to support people or the economy. It tracks these needs through an environmental accounting system. Accounts are the opposite of biologically productive regions that people use for their use in a region or biologically productive area available in the world. In brief, it is a measure of human impact on the environment. Footprints and biocapacity can be compared on an individual, regional, national, or global scale. Each year the number of people, the cost per person, the production efficiency, and the productivity of the ecosystem change both the footprint and the biological capacity. Globally, footprint assessments show how much more human needs than what the world can renew.

Ecological footprint analysis is widely used in support of global sustainability assessments. It enables people to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy and to explore the sustainability of personal lifestyles, products, and services, companies, industrial sectors, neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations.

The easiest way to define an ecological footprint is the amount of environment needed to produce the products and services needed to support a particular lifestyle. The model is a means of using and comparing lifestyles and testing them against biological abilities. A tool can use a region to use more (or less) than what is available in its territory, or to test policy to see how replicable a nation's lifestyle will be global. Footprints can also be a useful tool for educating people about excessive use in order to change personal behavior. Ecological footprints can be used to argue that many current lifestyles are not sustainable. Country-wise comparisons show the disparity in resource use on this planet.

Ecological footprint history

The first academic publication on ecological footprint was in 1992 by William Rees. Ecological footprint concepts and calculation methods were developed from 1990 to 1994 as a Ph.D. dissertation by Mathis Wackernagel under the auspices of Rees at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. To make the concept more readily available, Rees coined the term ecological footprint, inspired by a computer technician who praised the small footprint on the desk of his new computer. In 1996, Wackernagel and Rees published our book Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.

How to reduce the ecological footprint

i. Be a Responsible Consumer

ii. Buy FSC products

iii. Minimize the use of plastics

iv. Use your own shopping bags

v. Buy items with less packaging

vi. Buy locally grown food

vii. Purchase energy-efficient appliances

viii. Eat fewer foods that harm the environment

ix. Buy organic food

x. Use energy-efficient LED light bulbs

xi. Make your garden or backyard pollinator-friendly

xii. Recycle what you can’t reuse and compost organic waste

xiii. Create a green roof or go solar

xiv. Power your home with green energy

xv. Use cold water for washing and rinsing your laundry

xvi. Unplug everything when not in use

xvii. Donate used items in good condition

xviii. Go paperless with bills, newsletters, magazines

xix. Drive less and bike more

xx. Take public transit.

Advantages of ecological footprint

i. An ecological footprint is a unit that allows the division of indicators.

ii.  It could be widely applied to various programs/activities.

iii.  It may be top-down or bottom-up.

iv.  It is useful as a means of communication policy.

v.  The method is constantly being updated and improved by the Global Footprint Network.

vi.  It is able to indicate the nature of limited natural capital.

vii.  It creates credibility as a policy tool.

viii.  It has the ability to analyze the sustainable development of a vague concept into measurable objectives.

Disadvantages of ecological footprint

i. Using hypothetical land for ecological footprint analysis, which does not represent actual land use.

ii. This makes it easier to use natural resources,

iii. It is risky to double count.

iv. Most are portraits of consumption.

v. It does not provide clear policy guidelines without cost subtraction.

vi. Sometimes, it is based on dubious assumptions.

Ecological Footprint limitations and criticism

Some researchers have misinterpreted ecological footprint accounting as a social theory or policy guideline when in reality it is simply a metric that adds human needs that compete for the planet's regenerative power. Examples of such confusion include Grazi who made a systematic comparison of the environmental footprint method with spatial welfare analysis that includes environmental externality, collective impact, and trade advantage. Without acknowledging that environmental footprint is merely a metric, they conclude that footprint methods do not lead to maximum social welfare. Similarly, Newman (2006) argues that the concept of the environmental footprint may have an urban antagonism, as it does not consider the opportunities created by urban growth. He argues that calculating environmental footprints for densely populated areas, such as a city or a small country with a relatively large population, such as New York and Singapore, respectively, can lead to the perception of this population as a parasite. But in reality, environmental footprints only document the city’s resource dependence - such as a fuel gauge documenting a car’s fuel availability. Newman questions the metric because these communities have a low internal biological capacity and must instead rely on large inland. Critics argue that this is a dubious feature because farmers in developed countries can easily use more resources than urban residents due to transportation requirements and the absence of a scale economy. In addition, such moral decisions seem to be an argument for authoritarianism. It’s like blaming a scale for a user’s dietary preferences. Some take this train of thought one step further, claiming that footprint denies the benefits of trade. Such critics, therefore, argue that footprints can only be applied worldwide. Others have argued the opposite, that national assessments provide helpful insights.