Sites related to GeogSplace
Spatialworlds blog
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Scoop.it sites for the class
Email
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au The ecological footprint concept
Use the attached questions as you do your ecological footprint, watch the videos and read the materials.
Read from the Essentials book: Page 147-158
A popular concept and application to the issue of resource use and environmental impact is that of
ecological footprinting. When looking at resource use it is a useful concept
but by no means answers all the questions.
An ecological footprint measures the total amount of land and resources
used, it includes your carbon footprint but goes further. Find out your
ecological footprint by answering questions about your lifestyle. See how your
choices affect the environment and whether you are living beyond the capacity
of the planet.
Here are just some
of the general footprint calculators on the Internet
The EPA in Victoria has customised the footprinting concept even further to help businesses, schools and events organisers to use the concept to calculate their footprints. Have a look at their calculators at http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/ecologicalfootprint/calculators/
Some background and limitations
The Ecological
Footprint Analysis (EFA) concept was developed by Mathis Wackernagel and
William E. Rees in 1996 to represent the natural resource consumption
associated with human activity (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996). The ecological
footprint is defined as the total area of biologically productive land and
water required by an entity to sustain its current consumption levels. The
result is an area, usually given in hectares. Ecological Footprint analysis has
been applied to countries, businesses, individuals, and educational institutions.
EFA helps generate
awareness of the magnitude of consumption. For example, the average Canadian
footprint is 7.8 ha per capita (Onisto, 1998). What is the average in Australia? That is, the typical Canadian consumes about
eight hectares of the world's resources (as if all of the world's resources
were spread evenly over the earth--they are not) every year. As a citizen of
this planet, each person has a "fair share" of about two hectares of
earth (Onisto, 1998). Compare the two figures, and you'll see that if everyone
in the world were to live as Canadians (and Australians) do, the resources of
four planet earths would be required to sustain us.
The strength of the
EFA is that it communicates degrees and patterns of consumption simply and
clearly (Moffat, 2000). In addition to serving as an effective awareness tool,
the EFA can also be a guide towards sustainability through a change of practice
or policy. But the EFA has its limitations. It is a static measurement,
representing the consumption of an entity at one particular point in time. More
importantly, the only way to reduce the size of a footprint is to acquire more
land, decrease the population, or more realistically and appropriately, reduce
the amount of goods and services that each person consumes. Overall, the EFA is
a conservative measure of resource consumption since any practice considered by
its nature not sustainable (e.g., toxic waste production and assimilation) is not included in its calculations.
As with everything we study, we can map it across space. The mapping of ecological footprints across the world shows great disparity between developed and un/underdeveloped (LED/MED) countries. The following thematic map clearly shows that certain regions of the earth are consuming a disproportionate amount of the earths resources.
Some ideas to
reduce your footprint
There
is much advice on how we as individuals (and governments / businesses /
schools) can reduce our footprint. Here are just a few:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/reduce-your-carbon-footprint/
Finally, view the Resources presentation attached.
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