Urban and Ecological Footprints

Urban Environmental Management

Urban and
Ecological Footprints

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed."

- Mahatma Gandhi

onsider the immense pressure put on the environment. Researchers Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel have developed the ecological footprint concept - the area of land needed to provide the necessary resources and absorb the wastes generated by a

Tread lightly on the Earth

community - to highlight the impact of cities on the environment. London, UK serves as a good example: the ecological footprint of that city is 120 times the area of the city itself. They estimate that a typical North American city with a population of 650,000 would require 30,000 square kilometres of land - an area roughly the size of Vancouver Island, Canada - to meet domestic needs alone without even including the environmental demands of industry. In comparison, a similar size city in India would require 2,800 square kilometres.

Planners are faced with enormous challenges in providing a secure environment that meets the needs of both people and natural systems. And cities are not self-contained entities. Their problems and solutions are part of and impinge on those in other jurisdictions, putting even more pressure on already over-burdened local governments.

Documents and Reports	What is an Ecological Footprint? UNEP-WWF: Living Planet Reports WWF: Ecological Footprints - A Guide for Local Authorities UN-FPA: State of the World's Population 2001 - Footprints and Milestones WCS: Human Footprints Ecological Footprinting Analysis: Towards a Sustainability Indicator for Business European Common Indicator Project: Ecological Footprints [ PDF - 1 mb] Proceedings of the European Expert Workshop on the Ecological Footprint Approach SEI Programme on Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) Footprint Network: About the Ecological Footprint Material Health: A resource flow and ecological footprint of the NHS Giant Footprints - H. Girardet How Lightly Do You Tread Upon This Earth? - L. Beckerman Evaluating Ecological Footprints - P. Palmer The Ecological Footprint of Cities: Innovations For Greater Sustainability GDRC Policy Analysis Series E-199 The Ecological Footprints of Tokyo GDRC Case Study Series E-120.
Organizations and programmes	Base Camp Earth: Ecological Footprints Best Foot Forward Ecological Footprint Network Initiative Earth Council: Ecological Footprints of Nations GLOBIO: Mapping Human Impacts on the Biosphere OneWorld: Cities as Superorganizms Redefining Progress: Ecological Footprints
Footprint Calculators and Tools	The Ecological Footprint Quiz Genuine Progress Indicator Best Foot Forward: Footprint Calculator EfS: Ecological Footprint Calculator Footprint Estimation Form MEC Co-op: Footprint Calculator Carbon dioxide Calculator EPA-Victoria, Australia: Ecofootprint Calculator CO2 emissions from Your Journey UNESCO-IHE: Calculate your Water Footprint ED: Paper Calculator - determine the impact of your paper use. Carbon Counter: Carbon Offset Calculator Paper Calculator World Mapper: The World as you have never seen it before.
Urban Footprints	Berlin, Germany Helsinki, Finland Liverpool, UK [PDF - 1.3 mb] London, UK Manali, India Santiago, Chile Sonoma County, USA Tokyo, Japan Toronto, Canada York, UK Scotland's Footprint Northern Limits: Northern Ireland
So what do we do now??	Ecological Footprint Standards How Big is Our Ecological Footprint? Using the Concept of Appropriated Carrying Capacity for Measuring Sustainability Sustainable Markets - Citizen Action to Lighten Britain's Ecological Footprints EPA, Victoria, Australia: Pilots in Partnership
Related concepts and issues	Carrying Capacity Ecological rucksacks Energy Footprint Water Footprint and Virtual Water Carbon Footprint Food Miles Revisiting Carrying Capacity - W. Rees The Meaning of Sustainability : Biogeophysical Aspects - J. P. Holdren

More than one million people are added to the world's cities each week, and by the year 2000 over a half of the total world population will be urban.

September 23: As of today, humanity will have consumed all the new resources the planet will produce this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. For the rest of the year, we will be in the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, borrowing from the future.

GDRC calculated the ecological footprint of Tokyo metropolitan area. It turned out to be almost three times the land area of Japan as a whole