Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (New Catalyst's Bioregional Series, No 9)

Science & Math

Wackernagel, Mathis

Rees, William E.

Biological Sciences

New Society Pub

The only metric that tracks how much nature we have – and how much nature we use 
 Our economy is running a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme with the planet. We use future resources to run the present, using more than Earth can replenish. Like any such scheme, this works for a limited time, followed by a crash. 
 Avoiding ecological bankruptcy requires rigorous resource accounting ― a challenging task, but doable with the right tools. 
 Ecological Footprint accounting, first introduced in the 1990s and continuously developed, continues to be the only metric that compares overall human demand on nature with what our planet can renew ― its biocapacity ― and distils this into one number: how many Earths we use. 
 Ecological Footprint provides a complete introduction, covering: 
<ul>
<li> Footprint and biocapacity accounting </li>
<li> Data and key findings for nations </li>
<li> Worldwide examples including businesses, cities, and countries </li>
<li> Strategies for creating regenerative economies </li>
</ul>
 Whether you’re a student, business leader, future-oriented city planner, economist, or have an abiding interest in humanity’s future, Footprint and biocapacity are key parameters to be reckoned with and Ecological Footprint is your essential guide.

Ecological Footprint: Managing Our Biocapacity Budget

Business & Money

Beyers, Bert

Economics

New Society Publishers

Our dominant culture continues to celebrate blind economic expansion despite its heavy toll on people and nature all over the globe. In fact, our national income accounts (such as the GDP) and our policies ignore that much of today's economic income stems from liquidating our social and natural assets. While living on the planet's capital, rather than on the interest (or sustainable harvest) of its renewable assets, we operate as if we could transgress ecological limits forever. Rather than acknowledging this ecological reality, we actively resist recognizing biophysical limits and use wealth to temporarily shield ourselves from the fallout of ecological overshoot. This study addresses the core question of sustainability and shows why nations will also secure their future competitiveness if they improve their ecological performance. Taken together, all the countries studied consume approximately one-third more ecological services than their available ecological capacity can provide, suggesting that the global economy as a whole is poorly positioned for future competition. Still we find that the European countries, Japan, and Canada (this last because of its large ecological remainder) are in distinctly more favorable starting positions for future competitiveness than all the other countries. They are better at using fewer resources to produce commodities, and, in the case of the countries with ecological remainders, they take better care of their existing ecological capacities. Perhaps the most significant finding is that sixteen of the twenty eco-efficiency leaders (about eighty percent) are competitive, compared to only eleven of the twenty-four eco-efficiency laggards (about forty-five percent). This suggests either that eco-efficiency already offers a competitive edge or that competitiveness and high eco-efficiency are not mutually exclusive.

The Winners and Losers in Global Competition: Why Eco-Efficiency Reinforces Competitiveness : A Study of 44 Nations

Sturm, Andreas

Müller, Kaspar

Purdue University Press

Sharing Nature's Interest

Ecological footprinting is rapidly being adopted as an effective and practical way to measure our impact on the environment - in both large- and small-scale planning and development. This is an introduction to ecological footprint analysis, showing how it can be done, and how to measure the footprints of activities, lifestyles, organizations and regions. Case studies illustrate its effectiveness at national, organizational, individual and product levels.

Chambers, Nicky

Simmons, Craig

Reference

Routledge

The Winners and Losers in Global Competition. Why Eco-Efficiency Reinforces Competitiveness: A Study of 44 Nations

Verlag Rüegger

Unser ökologischer Fußabdruck: Wie der Mensch Einfluß auf die Umwelt nimmt (German Edition)

Birkhauser

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