Saturday, December 10, 2005

What is your global footprint?

How many planets do you need to sustain your current lifestyle?
I just did the quiz at ecofoot.org and discovered I have a footprint of 4 hectares and need 2.2 planets to keep it going. Scary.

What is a Global or Ecological Footprint? This is the definition from WWF and Bioregional's One Planet Living brochure :
"The Ecological Footprint is one way of measuring how our lifestyles impact not only on the planet, but also on other people. It calculates how much productive land, freshwater and sea is needed to feed us and provide all the energy, water and materials we use in our everyday lives. It also calculates the emissions generated from the oil, coal and gas we burn at ever-increasing rates, and it determines how much land is required to absorb our waste. Reducing our ecological footprint is a key aim of One Planet Living. A one planet lifestyle means having a footprint of less than 1.8 global hectares per person."

Now look at which countries achieve an average 1.8 hectares per person - 85 of them: see the Global Footprint Network or download a spreadsheet of footprints by country from the 2005 Edition of the National Footprint Accounts (data from 2002).

I've also listed them below. Their footprints range from 1.8 (Mauritius) down to 0.1 (Afghanistan):
Mauritius
Uzbekistan
Cuba
Jamaica
Panama
Syria
China
Dominican Republic
Jordan
Mauritania
Algeria
Azerbaijan
Botswana
Korea DPRP
Namibia
Papua New Guinea
Tunisia
Albania
Ecuador
Egypt
Thailand
Honduras
Kyrgyzstan
Moldova Republic
Niger
Colombia
El Salvador
Gambia
Guatemala
Nicaragua
Nigeria
Senegal
Burkina Faso
Chad
Gabon
Swaziland
Uganda
Armenia
Benin
Ghana
Indonesia
Iraq
Philippines
Sudan
Angola
Central African Republic
Guinea
Lesotho
Morocco
Myanmar
Peru
Togo
Zimbabwe
Cameroon
Ethiopia
Kenya
Laos
Mali
Sierra Leone
Sri Lanka
Vietnam
Burundi
Cote Divoire
Eritrea
Georgia
Guinea-Bissau
India
Rwanda
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Yemen
Congo
Congo Democratic Republic
Haiti
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mozambique
Nepal
Pakistan
Zambia
Bangladesh
Cambodia
Somalia
Afghanistan

The most industrialised, developed countries also have the largest footprint per person. The equivalent footprints for the top twenty, all 4.7 global hectares per person (ha/person) and above, are as follows:
United Arab Emirates - 10.5 ha/person
United States of America - 9.7 ha/person
Canada, Kuwait, Australia - 7.0-7.5 ha/person
Finland, New Zealand - 6.0-6.8 ha/person
Estonia, Norway, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium & Luxembourg - 5.0-5.9 ha/person
Czech Republic, Spain, Israel, Austria, Greece, Switzerland - 4.7-4.9 ha/person.

So, people sitting in your warm homes, here's the stark truth: our easy comfortable lifestyles are not sustainable. For real sustainability we all have to change our lifestyle until the global footprints for all countries are more in line with the countries in the first list above. And that will take more than switching off lights, recycling the rubbish or walking to work.

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