Lesson 11: Ecological Footprints

Introduction:
In all things that we do, we use different kinds of products and resources. Since
people’s lifestyles differ, some people use more resources than others. This can be
observed among developed and developing countries. Some things can be easily
acquired because they are abundant or cheap, while others are difficult to access
because it needs more energy to process or are more expensive or rare. But no matter
how easy or difficult to access them they are all derived from resources that are either
renewable or non renewable. These resources are mostly from lithosphere and
hydrosphere

Pre – Assessment

Fill in the table below to assess your prior knowledge about ecological footprint. The last
column will be filled after the lesson.

K W L
What I Know What I Want to Learn What I Have Learned

Review

Recall what is anthropocene? What is the basis of considering it as a new era by

its advocates?
 Feedback

 Answers will vary

 Anthropocene is the recent period in Earth’s history when human activity
started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and
ecosystems.

Motivation

Fill up the table below.

Things that you use every day Quantity /week Source of Raw Material
Ex. Toilet paper 3 rolls Trees

New Lesson

All of the resources which people use for their daily needs and activities come
from somewhere, even if not from their immediate surroundings. Food, electricity, and
other basic amenities for survival must be produced within the confines of nature, using
raw natural resources. The use of resources between developing and non developing
countries differs. Developing countries where most of the people struggle to survive
used these resources for survival while those in richer countries use resources more
than their needs.

The processing of raw materials into products that man can use produce
pollution that has an impact to our environment. Ecological footprint – the amount of
biologically productive land and water needed to supply the people in a particular area
or country with resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced
by such resource use. The per capita ecological footprint is the average ecological
footprint of an individual in given country or area.

The Ecological Footprint is an account-based system of indicators whose

underlying context is the recognition that Earth has a finite amount of biological
production that supports all life on it. A widely recognized measure of sustainability, the
Ecological Footprint provides an integrated, multi scale approach to tracking the use and
overuse of natural resources, and the consequent impacts on ecosystems and
biodiversity.

Humanity’s total Ecological Footprint has been increasing steadily at an average

of 2.1 percent per year (SD = 1.9) since 1961, nearly tripling from 7.0 billion gha in
1961 to 20.6 billion gha in 2014. The increase in Ecological Footprint has been outpacing
biocapacity increases, which have increased at an average of 0.5 percent per year (SD =
0.7), from 9.6 billion gha in 1961 to 12.2 billion gha in 2014. Together, these results
indicate that Earth’s ecological overshoot began in the 1970s; further, ecological
overshoot continues to grow at an average rate of 2.0 percent (SD = 2.3) per year. In
2014, humanity’s Ecological Footprint was 69.6 percent greater than Earth’s biocapacity.

Biocapacity is measured by calculating the amount of biologically productive land

and sea area available to provide the resources a population consumes and to absorb its
wastes, given current technology and management practices. To make biocapacity
comparable across space and time, areas are adjusted proportionally to their biological
productivity. These adjusted areas are expressed in “global hectares”. Countries differ in
the productivity of their ecosystems.

During the same period, per capita Ecological Footprint increased by 24 percent
(2.29 to 2.84 gha per person), while per capita biocapacity decreased by 46 percent
(3.13 to 1.68 gha per person). The increase in total biocapacity and decrease in per
capita biocapacity are indicative of a growing global population. More recently, the world
Ecological Footprint per person decreased by 1.1 percent between 2010 and 2014, while
biocapacity per person decreased by 2.4 percent over the same time period. In other
words, although our individual share of the world’s biocapacity is decreasing, we are
also reducing our individual demand on nature.
 The carbon Footprint is the fastest growing Footprint component; in 2014, it
comprised 60 percent of the world’s total Ecological Footprint. This is a significant
increase from the carbon Footprint in 1961, which contributed to 44 percent of the
world’s Ecological Footprint, or 150 years ago, when it was less than one percent of
what it is today. Cropland footprint was the next largest contributor to the world’s
Ecological Footprint in 2014, at 19.4 percent, followed by forest-product (9.8 percent),
grazing-land (5.1 percent), fishing-ground (3.3 percent), and built-up-land (2.3 percent)
Footprint types.
Across individual countries, results show that most countries run a biocapacity
deficit, where they have larger Ecological Footprints than biocapacity. Countries that
continue to have biocapacity reserves (where the biocapacity within a country’s borders
is greater than the ecological footprint of that country) tend to be located in forested
regions, such as the tropics and boreal latitudes.

There is said to be an ecological deficit if the country’s total ecological footprint is

larger than its biological capacity to replace its renewable resources and absorb the
resulting waste products and pollution. Data showed that humanity’s global ecological
footprint go beyond the earth’s biological capacity by about 25%. Among the affluent
countries United States has the world’s total ecological footprint. If the present
exponential growth in the use of renewable resources continues it is estimated that by
2050 people will use twice as many renewable resources as the planet can supply.

The per capita ecological foot print is an estimate of how much of the earth’s
renewable resources an individual consumes. United States has the world’s second
largest per capita ecological footprint, 4.5 times the average global footprint per person
and 12 times the average per capita footprint in the world’s low – income countries. It
would take the land area of about five more planet earth’s for the rest of the world to
reach U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology or if a person from developing
country will consumes as much as the average American does, the earth’s natural capital
could support only 1.3 billion people not today’s 7.8 billion. In short, we are living
unsustainably by depleting and degrading the earth’s rare natural capital and the natural
renewable income it provides as our ecological footprints grow and spread across the
surface of the earth.

Ecological overshoot has continued to grow since the 1970s at an average rate
of 2 percent per year. Humanity is now demanding 1.7 planets to sustain our demand
on Earth’s natural resources. While global biocapacity has also increased, primarily due
to increased agricultural yields, the Ecological Footprint of the world continues to
outpace biocapacity. Global ecological-overshoot trends are indicative of the loss and
degradation of natural capital, and the accumulation of waste in our atmosphere. The
physical manifestations of ecological overshoot include biodiversity loss, climate change,
deforestation, fisheries depletion, and soil degradation

https://www.ibtimes.com/5-worst-best-countries-environment-ranked-ecological-footprint-2533559

Case Study:

China’s New Affluent Consumers

More than a billion super affluent consumers in developing countries are outing
immense pressure on the earth’ natural capital. Another billion consumers are attaining
middle class, affluent lifestyles in rapidly developing countries such as China, India,
Brazil, South Korea and Mexico. The 700 million middle class consumers in China and
India number more than twice the size of the entire U.S. population. In 2006, the World
Bank projected that by 2030, the number of middle class consumers living in today’s
developing nation will reach 1.2 billion – about four times the current U.S. population.

China is now the world’s leading consumer of wheat, rice, meat, coal, fertilizers,
steel, cement and is second largest consumer of oil after United States. China leads in
the world’s consumption of goods such as tv, cell phones, refrigerators, and personal
computers. On the other hand after 20 years of industrialization, two thirds of the
world’s most polluted cities are in China; this pollution threatens the health of the urban
dwellers. Today, China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of cars and leading
in economy in terms of GDP PPP.

Suppose that China’s economy continues growing exponentially at a rapid rate

and its projected population size reaches by 2033. Then China will need 2/3 of the
world’s current grain harvest, twice the world’s current paper consumption and more
than the current global production of oil.

According to policy expert Lester R. Brown

The western economic model –the fossil fuel based, automobile centered throw
away economy – is not going to work for China. Nor will it work in India, which by 2033
is projected to have a population even larger than China’s or for the other 3 billion
people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American Dream”

Activity:

Activity 11.1

1. Log on to www.footprintcalculator.org and answer the ecological footprint quiz.

Questions:
1. What is your ecological footprint?

2. How many planets does your ‘footprint’ need? Why did you get such results?

3. The earth’s biocapacity or total available resources is only about 1.8 hectares per
person. How does your footprint compare with this?

4. How many are you in your house? Multiply that by 1.8 hectares to get the total
biocapacity for the persons living with you.

Number of persons: _______________________

 Biocapacity for family: _____________________

5. Get the total ecological foot print of your family. [each member of the family will
be encouraged to answer the ecological footprint quiz]. How does this compare
with the total biocapacity for your family?

6. If your family’s total footprint is greater than the earth’s biocapacity for your
family, what do you think would be the possible consequences of this fact to our
planet?

7. What did you feel upon realizing the possible effects on our planet of the fact
that your family’ total footprint is greater than what the earth can provide?

8. Suggest ways on how to reduce your carbon footprint in a drawing.

Conclusion:

Subsequent to the Lesson

Summary

All of the resources which we use for our daily needs and activities come
from somewhere, even if not from their immediate surroundings. Food, electricity, and
other basic amenities that we need to survive must be produced within the confines of
nature, using raw natural resources. The Ecological Footprint measures a population’s
demand on nature. Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures,
Ecological Footprint accounting measures a population’s demand for natural ecosystems’
supply of resources and services.
Humanity is currently using resources 1.7 times faster than ecosystems can
regenerate i.e. globally we are using 1.7 planets and we only have one. The costs of this
global ecological excessive spending become more and more obvious all over the world,
in the form of shrinking forests, species loss, drought, water scarcity, soil erosion, loss of
biodiversity, and carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere.
 Reflection
What changes in your life you can do to reduce your carbon footprint?

Post – Assessment

You can now fill up the last column for What I have Learn of your KWL. Your answers
will be assessed by the accuracy and content of your answers.

Criteria Description Score

4 3 2 1
Accuracy The student The student The student The student
and shows a deep shows shows a shows limited
content understanding considerable shallow understanding
of the topic understanding understanding of the topic
of the topic of the topic

References

Andaya, Cynthia V. (2008) Understanding the Earth Through Environmental Science C & E Publishing Inc.
2008

Miller, G. T. &Spoolman, S. E. (2009) Essentials of Ecology. Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/7/3/58/htm : Ecological Footprint Accounting for Countries: Updates and

Results of the National Footprint Accounts, 2012–2018