Stocks and flows of natural capital: Implications for Ecological Footprint

Over the past decade, Ecological Footprint has become one of the most popular and widespread indicators for sustainability assessment and resource management. However, its popularity has been coupled, especially in recent years, by the emergence of critical views on the indicator’s rationale, methodology and policy usefulness. Most of these criticisms commonly point to the inability of the Ecological Footprint to track the human-induced depletion of natural capital stocks as one of the main shortcomings of the methodology. Fully addressing this issue will require research efforts and, most likely, further methodological refinements. The aim of this paper is therefore to outline the basis of a new area of investigation in Ecological Footprint research, primarily aimed at implementing the distinction between the use of stocks and the use of flows in Ecological Footprint Accounting and debating its implications.     

The Environmental Impacts of Consumption at a Subnational Level

This article analyzes the environmental effects of resource consumption at a subnational level (by Cardiff, the capital city of Wales), using the Ecological Footprint as a measure of impact assessment. The article begins by providing a short critique of the Footprint methodology and the limitations of methods traditionally used to calculate national Footprint accounts. We then describe the Footprint methodology developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute to overcome some of these problems and used as the basis of the Reducing Wales' Ecological Footprint project, of which the Cardiff study has been a part. The main portion of this article focuses on presenting and discussing the Footprint results for Cardiff. The Ecological Footprint of household consumption in Cardiff will be presented using the international Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP). Based on the results, we found that the areas of consumption that are a priority for Cardiff in terms of reducing resource use are food and drink, passenger transport (car and aviation), domestic fuel consumption, waste, and tourism. We also discuss how these findings have been presented to the Cardiff Council. We report on the initial reactions of policy officers to the Footprint results and how the Council plans to use them to influence policy decisions relating to sustainability. Finally, in the Conclusions section, we briefly explain the value of applying the Ecological Footprint at a subnational level and its value as an evidence-based tool for sustainability decision making.     

Reckoning perverse outcomes of resource conservation policies using the Ecological Footprint

Spatially expanding economies threaten the status of basic natural resources. In particular, wildlife habitats rarely benefit. Apart from protected areas, political-economic decision-making is ill-prepared to accommodate wildlife habitats with standard valuation methods. In some cases habitat loss is an inadvertent outcome of resource conservation policies intended to lower resource consumption.We recognize the term resource conservation as multifaceted, with a range of meanings from protecting wildlife habitats to efficiently allocating and using materials and energy. Resource conservation policies that spur economic benefits may produce unwanted outcomes. This is partly because linkages between economic and conservation goals seem tangential. Moreover, relevant information is imperfect and predictive tools are limited. This is particularly true for land converting impacts, which are often addressed after the fact, not during policy formulation, and can lead to successive resource degradation.We argue for the need to calculate the positive and negative land converting impacts from resource conservation policies that may expand the economy. Using the Ecological Footprint (EF) approach, we tested for potentially perverse outcomes of an existing resource conservation policy. In doing so, we conceptually mapped linkages among economic sectors to their cumulative effects of converting land. We assume an inverse relationship between economic expansion and land conservation.A New York State energy efficiency incentive program was tested using recent data from all tracked economic sectors. The economic data were converted in a series of steps from dollar values to energy units, to carbon dioxide emissions, and ultimately expressed in hectares of net land conversion. A policy scenario was compared to a reference scenario (no resource conservation policy), and the results anticipate a net gain in conserving land (0.6% reduced conversion). We interpret this as a potentially proportional offset favoring wildlife habitat retention. Two sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the policy’s impact on conserving land depended on both the affected economy’s scale (tripling reduces the estimated benefit to 0.2%), and the level of economic expansion that followed (doubling leads to a net loss of wildlands).This novel use of the EF approach may serve as a model for a more general approach to assessing a broader class of policies. It may also hold promise toward developing tools that can better examine well-intentioned resource conservation policies with uncertain outcomes. Our hope is that work like this can lead to better sets of tools for examining critical ecological–economic linkages for improved policy design.     

基于弹性系数的江苏省能源生态足迹影响因素分析

在核算1985—2006年江苏省能源生态足迹的基础上,采用弹性系数方法,对江苏省能源生态足迹的影响因素进行分析和评价,包括不同影响因素的作用程度高低、不同时期主要及次要影响因素的变动等。这对促进江苏省能源与社会、经济和生态的协调发展,具有重要意义。研究结果显示:不同时期,影响江苏省能源生态足迹的主导因素不同。2003年以前,江苏省分别经历了主导因素变动、耕地因素主导和人口因素主导3个时期;2003年以后,全省第二产业比重反弹,第二产业比重偏大,产业结构不合理,成为目前促进江苏省能源生态足迹提高的主导因素。同时在2003年以后,江苏省城市化水平的迅速提高(2005年已达50%)和全省能源技术效率的下降(单位GDP能耗由0.78反弹至0.89tce/万元),这些次要因素也推动了江苏省能源生态足迹的提高。     

70 years of permanent plot research in The Netherlands

Abstract. Within the framework of the Dutch ‘Network Ecological Monitoring’, a large set of new permanent plots has been established to monitor selected plant communities throughout The Netherlands for studying the effects of environmental changes on species composition of semi‐natural communities. This national programme will also make use of pre‐existing permanent plots. These plots reflect the long and comprehensive history of research using permanent plots in The Netherlands, where the first permanent plots were established in the early 1930s. To enhance the usefulness of preexisting permanent plots, a comprehensive permanent plot database was compiled. This database was derived from the Dutch National Vegetation Database, that was established for the recent vegetation classification of The Netherlands. This was supplemented with information from various organizations and a number of individual researchers. Currently, the permanent plot database contains ca. 6000 permanent plots. More than 2500 of these plots have been sampled at least 5, and ca. 1500 plots at least 10. Most of the plots are from grasslands, followed by forests and dune systems. This database not only provides insight into vegetation succession, fluctuations within plant communities over time, and the effects of changes of the environment on the vegetation but, indirectly, italso offers the possibility of studying the long‐term behaviour of individual plant species (e.g. establishment, competition, longevity). For the Network Ecological Monitoring a selection of these (historical) plots will be added to the new network of permanent plots in The Netherlands, thus supplying information of past vegetation conditions.     

Influencing factors of the grassland ecological compensation policy to herdsmen's behavioral response: An empirical study in Hexi corridor

Ecological protection of grassland is an important part of the construction of ecological civilization in China. Grassland ecological compensation and reward policy is an important policy for grassland ecological protection in China. As the main participants in the grassland ecological compensation and reward policy, herders' behavioral response largely affects the effect of policy implementation. In this study, 550 herders in two regions with different compensation standards were selected as samples, and the comparative analysis of herdsmen's response to policy behavior and influence factors was carried out. The results showed that the grassland area owned by herders, ethnic group and perception of policies were important factors to affect the response of herdsmen's behavior in the two regions, but larger differences existed in the two regions. The grassland area and family size owned by herders are important factors that affect the response of herdsmen's behavior in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; However, the ethnic group, the understanding of policy and family income are the important factors in the western desert area.     

Ecological Footprint: Refining the carbon Footprint calculation

Within the Ecological Footprint methodology, the carbon Footprint component is defined as the regenerative forest capacity required to sequester the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions that is not absorbed by oceans. A key parameter of the carbon Footprint is the Average Forest Carbon Sequestration (AFCS), which is calculated from the net carbon sequestration capacity of forests ecosystems.The aim of this paper is to increase the clarity and transparency of the Ecological Footprint by reviewing the rationale and methodology behind the carbon Footprint component, and updating a key factor in its calculation, the AFCS. Multiple calculation options have been set to capture different rates of carbon sequestration depending on the degree of human management of three types of forest considered (primary forests, other naturally regenerated forests and planted forests). Carbon emissions related to forest wildfires and soil as well as harvested wood product have been included for the first time in this update of the AFCS calculation. Overall, a AFCS value range of 0.73 ± 0.37 t C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ has been identified. The resulting carbon Footprint and Ecological Footprint values have then been evaluated based on this value range. Results confirm that human demand for ecosystem services is beyond the biosphere's natural capacity to provide them.     

The influence of farming technique on cropland: A new approach for the Ecological Footprint

The relationship between farming management and the overexploitation of natural resources is often a theme of discussion in the environmental sciences. Moreover, farmers’ choices – driven by consumer demand – have a significant effect on the agricultural production system.The Ecological Footprint methodology as it currently implemented assumes that all cropland activities are sustained by the capacity of the ecosystem, basing both demand and capacity calculations on the exact same flow accounting. This causes some confusion in the evaluation of the ecological performance of farming because it appears that this activity has no consequences on the planet.This paper proposes a solution to this duality caused by the current methodological assumption about croplands, and investigates the influence of different farming techniques on Ecological Footprint results. Starting from the concept of an embodied footprint in production, we propose a new approach for the evaluation of farming performance. This approach permits an estimation of the impact of farming activity, linked to the farmers’ technique, and a calculation of the crop Footprint in reference to the production capacity of the natural system.Building on the central methodology of the Ecological Footprint, we provide a different evaluation system and show case study results for comparison.     

Global assessment of relationships between climate and tree growth

Tree‐ring records provide global high‐resolution information on tree‐species responses to global change, forest carbon and water dynamics, and past climate variability and extremes. The underlying assumption is a stationary (time‐stable), quasi‐linear relationship between tree growth and environment, which however conflicts with basic ecological and evolutionary theory. Indeed, our global assessment of the relevant tree‐ring literature demonstrates non‐stationarity in the majority of tested cases, not limited to specific proxies, environmental parameters, regions or species. Non‐stationarity likely represents the general nature of the relationship between tree‐growth proxies and environment. Studies assuming stationarity however score two times more citations influencing other fields of science and the science–policy interface. To reconcile ecological reality with the application of tree‐ring proxies for climate or environmental estimates, we provide a clarification of the stationarity concept, propose a simple confidence framework for the re‐evaluation of existing studies and recommend the use of a new statistical tool to detect non‐stationarity in tree‐ring proxies. Our contribution is meant to stimulate and facilitate discussion in light of our results to help increase confidence in tree‐ring‐based climate and environmental estimates for science, the public and policymakers.     

Estimating the human appropriation of land in Brazil by means of an Input–Output Economic Model and Ecological Footprint analysis

As we confront the current environmental crisis, determining the biophysical base (e.g., materials, energy, land, and water) of nations has become paramount. With advanced economies benefiting from the import of resource-intensive primary goods originating from poorer parts of the world, especially emerging nations, these are dilapidating their natural capital. Brazil is one of such emerging economies, whose mining and farming activities, propping up its export-led economic growth, exert great pressure on the environment. In particular, farming has been shown to have one of the world's greatest environmental impacts, especially as a consequence of land use associated with cattle ranching. Since a nation-wide evaluation of land-use types across the whole sectorial spectrum of the country's economy is still lacking, we used the most recently available Input–Output Economic Model for Brazil and the Ecological Footprint method to identify those economic sectors with the greatest potential for appropriating portions of the natural world.Our results show that: (i) the biggest chunk of Brazil's Ecological Footprint is due to its Carbon Footprint and, in particular, emissions from cattle; (ii) only a few economic sectors exhibit high Ecological Footprint values, chiefly those belonging to livestock farming and energy production based on fossil fuels; (iii) excluding the soybeans and slaughter sectors, export-oriented sectors have below-average Ecological Footprint values; and (iv) the percentage of Brazil's Ecological Footprint due to household consumption (excluding imports) is three times bigger than that attributable to exports, with sectors belonging to livestock farming contributing the most to such disparity.These results underscore that the environmental impact of the Brazilian economy can be drastically reduced by tackling the emission-intensive production processes of a few sectors only and disincentivizing the domestic consumption of a narrow range of products, especially with respect to the livestock segment.     

Policy Language in Restoration Ecology

Relating restoration ecology to policy is one of the aims of the Society for Ecological Restoration and its journal Restoration Ecology. As an interdisciplinary team of researchers in both ecological science and political science, we have struggled with how policy‐relevant language is and could be deployed in restoration ecology. Using language in scientific publications that resonates with overarching policy questions may facilitate linkages between researcher investigations and decision‐makers' concerns on all levels. Climate change is the most important environmental problem of our time and to provide policymakers with new relevant knowledge on this problem is of outmost importance. To determine whether or not policy‐specific language was being included in restoration ecology science, we surveyed the field of restoration ecology from 2008 to 2010, identifying 1,029 articles, which we further examined for the inclusion of climate change as a key element of the research. We found that of the 58 articles with “climate change” or “global warming” in the abstract, only 3 identified specific policies relevant to the research results. We believe that restoration ecologists are failing to include themselves in policy formation and implementation of issues such as climate change within journals focused on restoration ecology. We suggest that more explicit reference to policies and terminology recognizable to policymakers might enhance the impact of restoration ecology on decision‐making processes.     

Ecological Footprint: Informative and evolving – A response to van den Bergh and Grazi (2014)

Ecological Footprint accounting is used to track human demand on the Earth's biological resource flows, and compares that demand with the Earth's capacity to generate these flows. It is an evolving tool which has undergone many improvements alongside advancements in science and in response to critical review. Here we respond to van den Bergh and Grazi's recent points of criticism toward Ecological Footprint accounting. While the authors suggest that new criticism is accumulating, the main issues appear to be the same. We suggest that the majority of the criticism is derived from the misconception that the Ecological Footprint measures land “use,” which cannot exceed land availability. In response to these criticisms, we aim here to summarize and further clarify the major points of debate and confusion and allow readers to determine the relevance of these issues. We conclude that much of the prior discussion and many of the points repeated here reflect a divergence in general philosophical or semantic perspectives.     

Global Climate Change: Benefit-Cost Analysis vs. the Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle appears to be directly applicable to the prospect that human activities will cause substantial changes to global climate. The magnitude and characteristics of the change in climate and its effects on human activities and unmanaged ecosystems are highly uncertain, potentially catastrophic, and nearly irreversible on human time scales. Nevertheless, the precautionary principle adds little to benefit cost analysis for evaluating climate policies. Benefit cost analysis can incorporate aversion to uncertainty about future outcomes, and also provides a method for balancing this concern against concern for uncertain near term policy costs. The policies favored by setting constraints on future outcomes, such as atmospheric stabilization and tolerable windows, may be less precautionary than the policies favored by benefit cost analysis, as benefit cost analysis can more readily accommodate concerns for moderate as well as severe harms. Concerns about possible climate catastrophes can also be incorporated in benefit cost analysis and, in any event, may have limited implications for policy choice.     

Facing an unfortunate trade-off: policy responses,lessons and spill-overs during the COVID-19 pandemic

Although COVID-19 emerged as a global shock, governments adopted non-pharmaceutical policy responses that were rather heterogeneous, depending on cultural and institutional characteristics. At the country level, the stringency of ‘lockdown’-type policies should be set to achieve the best possible trade-off between economic and fatality dynamics, obviously accounting for possible cross-border influences. To allow for policy learning, I assume that the first country implementing a policy initiative that is worth emulating must either get the best possible health or the best possible economic outcome. I propose a combination of sign and magnitude restrictions, embedded in a global VAR model, to identify idiosyncratic policy shocks that spill over and influence policy responses abroad. Once policy shocks are identified, I run a comparison exercise between two model specifications, i.e. with and without policy emulation. Within a given a sample, this methodology can be used to find when and where policy lessons can be identified. I find that, among 17 developed and developing countries, few can offer lessons based on their policy initiatives, but several others might get better trade-offs through policy emulation, although in reality this outcome is not guaranteed to have occurred.     

Sustainability assessment of straw utilization circulation modes based on the emergetic ecological footprint

In order to find a reasonable way to return the straw and reduce waste of resources, sustainability assessment of four types of maize straw circulation modes, straw direct returning to the farmland (control), “straw-biogas-straw” (S-B-S), “straw-dairy-straw” (S-D-S) and “straw-dairy-biogas-straw” (S-D-B-S), are analyzed and compared. Based on the Emergetic Ecological Footprint (EEF) method, which is an integration of Ecological Footprint (EF) analysis and emergy accounting, the Footprint Investment per unit of Footprint Delivered (FIFD) was used as an indicator of the sustainability of an ecological system. The results showed that the FIFDs for these straw circulation modes were 0.81, 1.96 and 0.43, respectively, and a sustainability sequence of S-D-B-S>S-B-S>S-D-S, in which S-D-B-S has the highest sustainability and S-D-S is unsustainable. Therefore, the agriculture-biogas mode is better than the agriculture-livestock mode, and longer circulation chains correspond with stronger sustainability. Based on the results, we suggest that integrated-biogas subsystem should be developed and all wastes in agrosystem should be used more efficiently in order to increase the sustainability.     

Nonlinearities in mating sounds of American crocodiles

We use nonlinear time series analysis methods to analyze the dynamics of the sound-producing apparatus of the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus). We capture its dynamics by analyzing a recording of the singing activity during mating time. First, we reconstruct the phase space from the sound recording and thereby reveal that the attractor needs no less than five degrees of freedom to fully evolve in the embedding space, which suggests that a rather complex nonlinear dynamics underlies its existence. Prior to investigating the dynamics more precisely, we test whether the reconstructed attractor satisfies the notions of determinism and stationarity, as a lack of either of these properties would preclude a meaningful further analysis. After positively establishing determinism and stationarity, we proceed by showing that the maximal Lyapunov exponent of the recording is positive, which is a strong indicator for the chaotic behavior of the system, confirming that dynamical nonlinearities are an integral part of the examined sound-producing apparatus. At the end, we discuss that methods of nonlinear time series analysis could yield instructive insights and foster the understanding of vocal communication among certain reptile species.     

Methodology for determining the ecological footprint of the construction of residential buildings in Andalusia (Spain)

Construction activity is now a major consumer of natural resources. As a general rule, resource consumption has been evaluated through methodologies related to Life Cycle Analysis. This research is proposed to integrate the Ecological Footprint indicator into the building sector: to observe the difficulties and the benefits it can generate relative to other indicators. To this end, prior knowledge related to the Ecological Footprint indicator must first be adapted to the residential sector, by analyzing the construction of buildings, and secondly a calculation methodology is established in order to quantitatively determine what impacts are generated by industry according to the Ecological Footprint indicator. This methodology applies the indicator to resources used (energy, water, labour, construction materials, etc.) and to waste generated in the construction of residential buildings.The methodology is applied to a case study corresponding to the urbanization and building construction of a representative building type in Andalusia (Spain) when the building is in the planning stage. The final result is 0.384 gha/year/m².     

Insights on the implications of COVID-19 mitigation measures for mental health

Given the unprecedented level and duration of mitigation policies during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, it is not surprising that the public and the media have raised important questions about the potential for negative mental health consequences of the measures. To answer them, natural variability in policy implementation across US states and over time was analyzed to determine if mitigation policies correlated with Google searches for terms associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Findings indicated that restaurant/bar limits and stay-at-home orders correlated with immediate increases in searches for isolation and worry but the effects tapered off two to four weeks after their respective peaks. Moreover, the policies correlated with a reduction in searches for antidepressants and suicide, thus revealing no evidence of increases in severe symptomatology. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Interregional bio-physical connections—A ‘footprint family’ analysis of Israel’s beef supply system

The need to advance bio-physical accounting as a base for sustainability assessment has been acknowledged and advanced in recent years. One approach highly relevant to the 21st century global reality is the ‘Footprint’—Ecological, Land, Water and Carbon. While each has merits and limitations, the potential to bring all together under the title of the ‘Footprint Family’ is emerging. This paper embraces a footprint family approach to analyze beef consumption in the state of Israel over a decade (1999–2010) and explore some tradeoffs between different biophysical components. The research results reveal that on average a tonne of beef consumed in Israel, reflecting a mixture of sources of supply from all over the world requires 9.5 ha of land and 10,000 m³ of water, mostly for grazing in Latin America (in Brazil and Argentina) but also for growing feed in the U.S and the E.U. Enteric fermentation, manure management, farm operations, shipping and slaughtering generate approximately 19.7 t of CO₂e and the above can be integrated into an ecological footprint figure of approximately 6 global hectares. The paper also demonstrates the utility of inter-regional biophysical accounting at the detailed commodity level. Inter-regional accounting identifies the geographic locations that contribute resources to, and are affected by, the production of specific consumption products. Comprehensive interregional biophysical accounting can be used to generate a better understanding of the complex ecological impacts associated with most consumption products, and the implications of the relationship between these impacts for sustainability.     

西南岩溶区广西生态安全及资源利用效率

构建了基于生态足迹理论的生态安全综合评价模型,然后基于生态安全评价指标,把数据驱动下动态计量经济学的单位根检验和与协整分析模型引进到生态安全与资源利用效率之间的动态均衡关系的研究中来。以西南岩溶区广西为例,首先采用生态足迹理论方法来测算1990～2003年广西生态安全的生态足迹、生态承载力、生态盈亏及生态压力指数,然后采用动态计量的协整分析方法对广西区域资源利用效率与生态安全状况诸指标之间的长期关系进行了协整分析。结果显示,广西生态足迹呈不断增加趋势,生态承载力呈不断下降趋势,出现了严重的生态赤字,生态足迹压力增幅明显,从临界安全状态发展到不安全状态;资源利用效率不高与生态安全指标之间呈现一种长期稳定的趋势,这表明岩溶区广西的资源利用效率不高,生态安全形势不容乐观,需要及时采取应对策略与措施加以调控。