Ecological Footprint

Feed efficiency is a trait of enormous importance in any animal production sector including aquaculture. Individuals that are more feed efficient need to use less feed to achieve similar growth rates as compared to less efficient individuals. Considering that feed represents the largest cost of production and one of the main causes for the ecological footprint of a farm, more knowledge on the extent of individual differences in feed efficiency and underlying physiological processes are needed. This study is the first to investigate individual differences in feed efficiency, measured as residual feed intake and its relationship with feeding behaviour and stress response in one of the most important farmed fish, the Nile tilapia. The individual feed intake of twenty-four juvenile of Nile tilapia was followed during 57 days. Fish were fed until apparent satiation with a commercial feed twice per day. Individual feed behavior was registered once per week and consisted on measuring the latency to start feeding (LAT, min), total feeding time (TFT, min) and the number of feeding acts (NFA, min). Blood samples for plasma cortisol was taken at the end of the experiment (control, indicative of undisturbed levels) and after a stress test (netting), 15 days after the previous sampling. Individual growth rates and residual feed intake were determined at the end of the experiment. Results show pronounced individual differences in residual feed intake as well as a significant correlation with both feeding behavior (feeding latency, total feeding time and number of feeding acts) and stress (cortisol) response. Cortisol levels obtained after the stress test and feeding behavior could explain differences in residual feed intake by 4%. These results show that individuals with higher feeding activity and higher cortisol response are less efficient fish. This suggests that individual differences in feeding activity and stress response explain part of the differences in feed efficiency by explaining variance in maintenance energy expenditure.

This paper employs ecological footprint analysis as a potential non-monetary metric of human consumption and ecological productivity in a simulation-modeling framework, applied to North America. The ecological footprint provides an indirect basis for considering the long-term ecological risk and sustainability of human settlements, regions or, in this case, a continent. We examine several scenarios for human consumption, ecological productivity and material efficiency, to explore which variables have influence on the ecological budget of North America over the coming century. Only one scenario, which assumes considerable reductions in human consumption, is likely to yield an ecological surplus. Unlike monetary measures of societal well-being, ecological footprint analysis shows that increased economic activity and consumption creates deficits in terms of the balance of ecological productivity and consumption in a region, and may reduce long-term ecological sustainability. Several advantages and disadvantages of this metric are discussed. r

This study’s estimate of Canberra’s ecological footprint is consistent with the results of other studies being conducted in Australia, particularly those by Griffith University in Brisbane.
In world terms, Australia is among the countries with higher per person ecological footprints, including USA and Canada. Each one of us with a modern day lifestyle needs 4-5 ha of ecologically productive land to supply our food, living space and built environment and to assimilate our wastes. This is equivalent to more than 50 average sized housing blocks per
person. Such is the size of our dependence on land that is remote from where we live our daily lives.


An ecological footprint is the per person area of land required to supply the goods and services that sustain our everyday life and lifestyle. It is defined as the amount of land in six categories (crop, grazing, garden, consumed, forest and energy land) required to provide our requirements for food, housing, transport, consumer goods and services.
An approximation of the ecological footprint for Canberra is about 4.44 hectares (that is, nearly 58 average sized Canberra houseblocks) per person.

Authors Barney Foran, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Sustainable Ecosystems, and Anne Close, Masters student at the University of Canberra

University of Canberra Masters of Environmental Education students researched separate parts of the Canberra Ecological
Footprints Project: Richard Clements, Jacek Lukaszyk, David Marsden-Ballard and
Rosemary Metcalf.

This paper focuses on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of four waste management strategies: landfill without biogas utilization; landfill with biogas combustion to generate electricity; sorting plant which splits the inorganic waste fraction (used to produce electricity via Refuse Derived Fuels, RDF) from the organic waste fraction (used to produce biogas via anaerobic digestion); direct incineration of waste. These scenarios are applied to the waste amount and composition of the Municipality of Roma (Italy) and are evaluated under different points of view: global and local emissions, total material demands, total energy requirements and ecological footprints. Results, reliable for most of the European big cities, show landfill systems as the worst waste management options and significant environmental savings at global scale are achieved from undertaking energy recycling. Furthermore, waste treatments finalized to energy recovery provide an energy output that, in the best case, is able to meet the 15% of Roma electricity consumption.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of educational drama practices on the ecological footprint awareness of the primary school teachers. In this research, pre-post test single-group quasi-experimental design was used and Ecological Footprint Scale was applied as pre-test and post-test to measure the ecological footprint awareness of primary teacher candidates before and after educational drama practices. Primary school teacher candidates conducted research on environmental issues for ten weeks, wrote a scenario about these issues, staged and watched their scenario. As a result of the study, it was found that the difference between the average scores of the ecological footprint awareness before and after the educational drama studies and the difference between the mean scores of all sub-dimensions were statistically significant (p<0.05). The difference between the average scores is calculated as a big effect[ή2] and it was interpreted that educational drama studies increased the ecological footprint awareness of primary school teacher candidates with a great effect and their sub-dimensions with a medium and large effect. The learner center, which can be used in educational processes, can be effective in providing different activities, information and can enable the acquisition of different behavior and habits with active participation.

Bioproductive land is one of the most significant natural resources. People use the land for receiving ecological services. This leads to humans using and favouring certain species, while competing with all other species. Land use can create diverse cultural landscapes of outstanding aesthetic, economic and ecological value, but it may equally result in land degradation, soil loss and impoverished ecosystems. Hence land use is shaped by processes of society-nature interaction. These processes can detract from sustainability-in other words, society-nature interaction may deplete the natural capital upon which the provision of ecosystem services for humans depends. Sustainability indicators aim at monitoring key aspects of society-nature interaction in order to generate information needed to document the current state and the history leading up to it. Moreover, they are useful to communicate complex sustainability problems within the scientific community, to policy-makers and the broad public. This paper introduces a special issue that seeks to contribute to the development of sustainability indicators that track society-nature interaction. We focus on a variety of concepts that measure socioeconomic metabolism. All the discussed approaches relate socioeconomic energy and material flows to the bioproductive area needed to support them, above all, the ecological footprint and the human appropriation of net primary production. In addition, this special issue also analyses the consequences of land use intensity on the diversity, naturalness and patterns of landscapes.

The contribution of the European food sector to the total amount of greenhouse gases emissions is equal to one fifth. Footprint indicators together with Life Cycle Assessment have emerged to be useful tools to analyze and report environmental performance. In this paper the environmental impact of aged vinegar produced from Grechetto and Sagrantino grapes varieties is analyzed. Life Cycle Assessment of wine is performed to calibrate the model. Impact assessment is studied evaluating: carbon footprint, ecological footprint, water footprint, acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation. The new approach proposed in this paper leads to the obtainment of a complete analysis of the impact of aged vinegar, which can help a small farm choose more sustainable production methods, also optimizing logistics. This is the scientific added value of the work. The results show that aged vinegar has a carbon footprint comprised between 1.94 and 2.54 kgCO 2 /l. The Ecological footprint of aged vinegar varies between 9.83 and 13.23 gm 2 /kg. The Water Footprint of aged vinegar varies between 1,332 and 1,892 l/l. The water scarcity weighted water footprint methods available in the software SimaPro 8 give different results depending on their assumptions. These can be useful for comparative studies between different products.

Pulp production accounts for a major part of the Canadian forest industry. Because of the ecological damage caused by the industry, there has been growing interest in the use of agricultural residues as an alternative or supplementary fibre source for pulp making. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the use of crop residues has the potential to reduce the environmental 'load' associated with pulp production. We answer this question by estimating and comparing the ecological footprints of the currently dominant practice of using spruce and aspen harvested from the boreal forest, with the practice of using plant fibre from the residue of wheat and flax crops commonly grown in the Canadian prairie provinces. The analysis accounts for all major land and energy inputs associated with the two production processes. The study results indicate that the ecological load of pulp production varies among resources and provinces. However, overall, the total eco-footprint of pulped wheat straw is the smallest.

The concept of rural vitality often used to describe the rural areas as specific areas that are of particular significance not only for the region but also the country as a whole. Depending on the objectives investigated there are different indicators used to evaluate the vitality – one of them – rural residents social portrait. Purpose of the research is to identify the impact of changes of social portrait of rural residents on rural vitality. In this study, the indicators of general censuses of 2001 and 2011 were used to assess the social portrait of rural residents. The results showed that changes of social portrait of rural residents had both positive and negative trends on rural vitality. As positive trends should be mentioned rising higher grade educated, multilingual population, a rapidly improving life and living conditions in the rural areas compared with the townspeople. The trends adversely affected the vitality of rural areas are: depopulation, the growing share of elder...

امروزه جمعیت کره خاکی از هر زمان دیگري بیشتر است و این روند به صورت افزایشی علی الخصوص در شهرها دیده میشود ولی اندازه محیط زیست بشر ثابت مانده است. آمایش محیط سعی دارد که با روشهاي مختلف مطلوبیت بهینه براي بهره برداران محیط بهینه را ایجاد نماید. اغلب عوامل اجتماعی، اقتصادي به عنوان عوامل اصلی موثر بر آمایش شناخته میشوند ولی امروزه عوامل زیست محیطی نیز به عنوان فاکتورهاي اصلی دخالت داده میشوندکه رعایت آنها اساس شکلگیري آمایش پایدار میباشد. اما اینکه با چه شاخصی پایداري را در آمایش وارد نماییم بر اساس روشهاي مختلفی امکانپذیر خواهد بود . این مقا له بر آنست که استفاده از ردپاي اکولوژیکی را در این زمینه معرفی نماید . بنابراین پس از معرفی ویژگیهاي مثبت و منفی آنرا بیان خواهد نمود. براي انجام این مطالعه از استنادات کتابخانه اي و روش توصیفی استفاده شده است.

The study's primary purpose is to examine young children's environmental awareness regarding their ecological footprint and environmental attitudes. The participants of this study are 100 Turkish early childhood children who were 5-6 years old. The data was collected using the Ecological Footprint Awareness of Children (abbreviated as EKAY-O in Turkish) visual scale and some demographic questions. Descriptive statistics, thematic descriptive analysis, and word cloud were used during the data analysis. According to the descriptive results, children's ecological footprint awareness was low due to their low scores. The thematic descriptive analysis results showed that most of the children's attitudes were anthropocentric towards several environmental phenomena. The word cloud analysis results showed that chil-dren's mothers are an essential factor in children's ecological footprint awareness and environmental attitudes behavior. It has been concluded that while raising environmentally friendly individuals, the parents of young children are as important as the education they received at school. It has been suggested that early childhood teachers should give more time to parents' involvement while working with children through the environment and ecology.

It is commonly expected that informal settlements in developing countries have a smaller ecological footprint than more economically advantaged areas because they consume fewer resources and use less energy. In this paper, we examine this idea by comparing the material consumption of two informal settlements to one moderate socioeconomic status (SES) neighbourhood in Suva, Fiji. We use the concept of the Ecological Footprint (EF) as a metric of comparison. Using a component-based EF approach we administered a questionnaire to 150 respondents from two informal settlements and one adjacent planned neighbourhood. Total EF and separate EF components (water, food, transport, energy, clothing, and material assets) were analysed through graphs, by examination of descriptive statistics, and through the use of non-parametric inferential statistics. We found differences between the adjacent planned neighbourhood and the informal settlements for several EF components but found no difference for other EF components (e.g. water consumption). Through questionnaires and interviews, we also examined perceived level of concern for environmental threats of informal settlement dwellers and residents of an adjacent moderate SES neighbourhood who share the same geographic space, but have very different living conditions. We found that concerns about sewage, deforestation, clean water and poor sanitation were of particularly high concern in one informal settlement, but not the other, suggesting that perceptions of threat can be very different even among informal settlements. We conclude that a better understanding of the social characteristics of informal settlements is valuable for informal settlement urban planning decisions in developing countries.

We calculated an Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) at a regional scale. EFA captures the human impact on the environmental system by identifying the amount of biologically productive land necessary to support a person's level of consumption and waste generation. EFA is a commonly used metric of sustainability because it is easy to conceptualize and the calculation is relatively straightforward. Utilizing free, readily available data, we calculated an EFA for a region in southern Colorado. Gathering existing data at a regional scale is difficult because data are often collected at national or state levels. The lack of data is further confounded by the fact that data are often collected at intervals greater than one year. Variables that were missing data for certain years were estimated using linear interpolation. Data not available by county were scaled to the region from state or national level data. Thirty-five variables from 1980 to 2005 (26 years) were collected and used to calculate a time-dependent EFA and the resulting trend was visually examined. The available biocapacity in the region did not decrease during the period, but per capita biocapacity decreased due to population growth. Per capita biocapacity was at a period high of nearly 41 ha per person (ha/ca) in 1980 and steadily decreased to a low around 31 ha/ca in 2005. Ecological footprint remained constant over the 26-year period, varying from a low of 5.1 ha/ca in 1997 to a high of 5.5 ha/ca in 1985. A steady ecological footprint combined with a decreasing per capita biocapacity, implies the ecological reserve is decreasing and, thus, the region is moving away from sustainability. Although per capita consumption did not increase substantially during the 26 years, more people are drawing on a fixed quantity of resources. Our methodology is a simplified approach to EFA and does not follow standards that are currently being established. Adhering to the suggested standards would require obtaining data sets that consist entirely of national data. The national level data are replaced with data specific to the geographic area under examination when they are available. Although national data may represent the sub-national region under study, that substitution requires further investigation, especially in large, geographically and culturally varied nations such as the US. Nevertheless, this simplified methodology provides enough detail that stakeholders can identify areas of the system on which to focus attention to improve sustainability of the system.

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.

De kring van moreel relevante wezens (moral patients), die aanvankelijk alleen tot de eigen clan- of stamgenoten beperkt was, werd in de loop van de geschiedenis steeds groter tot ze uiteindelijk de gehele mensheid omsloot, een mijlpaal die gemarkeerd werd door de declaratie van de rechten van de mens in de Verlichting. De uitbreiding van de morele gemeenschap heeft echter geen halt gehouden bij de mensheid, maar heeft zich ook daarbuiten stap voor stap verder voortgezet, eerst naar dieren, vervolgens naar planten en micro-organismen en tenslotte naar complete ecosystemen.

Currently, most national and sub-national Ecological Footprint analyses report results in "global hectares," hectares with world-average biological productivity for a given year. Yield and equivalence factors are used to express bioproductive area measured in actual hectares in terms of the corresponding number of normalized global hectares. The global hectare calculation method is widely adopted and described in existing papers. Equivalence factors are adjusted on a yearly basis to ensure that total number of global hectares on Earth equals the total number of biologically productive hectares. Because of this normalization, although the actual useful biological production from a single global hectare has increased over time, this increase is not displayed directly in time trends shown in global hectares. This yearly change in the total production of a global hectare makes time trends of Ecological Footprint and biocapacity difficult to interpret. This paper proposes a method for reporting Ecological Footprint and biocapacity time trends in "constant global hectares," hectares normalized to have world-average biological productivity in a single reference year. A constant global hectare allows trends in both total bioproductive area and trends in yield and productivity to be shown explicitly. This paper discusses the need for a constant global hectare, describes a preliminary method to calculate constant global hectares that was used in WWF International's Living Planet Report 2006, and discusses the implications of this method for Ecological Footprint applications.

Urban form and lifestyle patterns of a city's residents are determining factors in resource consumption. An urban metabolism study combined with life cycle analysis is used to assess the consumption of Medellin, Colombia. This data in turn is used to yield an ecological footprint assessment that indicates the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to supply the resources that are consumed and sequester the wastes that are produced. The method of analysis also enables exploration of potential changes to the built environment and lifestyle choices of urban residents that could help reduce consumption of resources with the aim of balancing the city's ecological footprint so that it does not exceed what is available biologically from surrounding natural areas and the global commons. This paper explores the consumption characteristics of Medellin and its ecological footprint as a means to probe opportunities for advancing urban sustainability in a Latin American context.

At a time when public and private agencies recognise the importance of sustainable development, the environmental impacts of mega sporting events are commanding increasing attention. However, despite event sponsors often flagging the importance of environmental as well as socioeconomic legacy components, the environmental impacts of events are difficult to assess quantitatively, being complex and often occurring over extended periods. The general assessment issue is particularly acute with regard to mega events such as the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup. The practical issues mean that any quantitative techniques seeking to assess environmental impacts are likely to be partial in scope. This paper examines two such approaches for quantitative impact assessment of selected environmental externalities connected with visitation at sporting events. The paper considers the use of Ecological Footprint analysis and Environmental Input-Output modelling. It provides examples of the applications of these techniques to discrete sporting events in a UK region, and discusses whether these techniques are appropriate for exploring the environmental impacts of mega events.

Scopo di questo articolo è verificare la materialità sociale della cosiddetta società dell’informazione e del capitalismo delle piattaforme, mostrando le contraddizioni tra capitale, lavoro e ambiente naturale. Per farlo, useremo la lente delle filiere produttive delle materie prime alla base dei nuovi dispositivi elettronici, focalizzandoci su uno dei cosiddetti minerali insanguinati, cioè il coltan (columbite-tantalite). In un primo momento ci concentreremo sulle regioni minerarie del Kivu (Nord Kivu e Sud Kivu), nella Repubblica Democratica del Congo orientale: esse sono caratterizzate da una produzione mineraria prevalentemente di tipo artigianale (Artisanal and Small scale mining), in cui persistono numerose forme di coercizione extra-salariale a causa dell’attività
di numerosi gruppi paramilitari e della diffusa economia informale ed illegale. Successivamente, ci focalizzeremo sulla propagazione digitale per mostrare l’altro volto della materialità sociale della società dell’informazione e del capitalismo delle piattaforme. Dagli anni ’10 del XXI secolo ad oggi il numero di dispositivi elettronici portatili (smartphone, pc, ecc.), diventati centrali nelle interazioni della nostra vita quotidiana, è aumentato vertiginosamente. Il peso della crescente domanda è ricaduto sui lavoratori del Sud globale (e di paesi come la
Cina), i quali sono sottoposti a pressioni enormi e a ritmi lavorativi massacranti al fine di garantire la produzione dei dispositivi elettronici. Parimenti, l’impronta ecologica ha assunto forme sempre più marcate: oltre all’impatto ambientale dovuto alla produzione vera e propria e alla circolazione delle merci, vi è anche l’enorme consumo di energia  elettrica necessario a mantenere operativi le infrastrutture informazionali alla base del capitalismo delle piattaforme.

The human society cannot be considered in isolation from nature; and human activities are always in need of environmental analyses. Therefore, communities require tools for determining the biosphere dynamics and the biophysical limitations of earth in order to assess the systems subdued
by humans. The ecological footprint is among the most important tools in this regard. It evaluates the relationship between humans and resources and is defined as the total area of land and water in different ecological levels,
needed to produce all the resources that people consume, and absorb the wastes they produce. The ecological footprint calculation is in fact the expansion of a quantitative method to illustrate the importance of investigating the effects the inhabitants’ consumption has on the productive
and non-productive land systems. This method can be employed in any area with comparable results. In this study, the ecological footprint of Isfahan was estimated considering the five basic factors of urban life: food, shelter, transportation, goods, and services. In 2011, the per capita ecological
footprint was calculated as 3.9 global hectares. This means that, the productive land and sea required for providing the needed resources and the sinks to absorb the waste resulting from the activities of each Isfahan citizen is 3.9 global hectares.

Within the recent debate about the needs for improving Ecological Footprint (EF) method, Kitzes and colleagues highlighted the necessity of standardised and detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies to support the calculation of specific impacts accounted in EF. As EF has been identified as a useful method for the evaluation of sustainability of tourism activities, this article presents a comparative study about sustainability evaluation of tourism activities, including LCA of a holiday and a hotel structure. The methodology for a joint use of the two methods was expected to provide more robust and detailed sustainability assessment as LCA is more comprehensive in terms of coverage of impact categories but disregard the carrying capacity of the system/limit of resource assessed by EF. The methodology was applied to two case studies in Northern Italy. The case studies showed that there is a correlation between the results of the two assessments, due to the relevance of energy and fossil fuel consumption as main drivers of impact.

This article explores and explains deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. It primarily takes a green criminological perspective and looks at the harm that is inflicted on many of the Amazon’s inhabitants, including indigenous populations such as ‘uncontacted’ tribes of hunters-gatherers, the oldest human societies. The green criminological perspective also implies that the definition of victimisation is being enlarged: not

In a world increasingly affected by global environmental changes, Low Income countries will play an ever more central role in determining the future health of the biosphere. While global use of the biosphere's capacity has increased over the past 45 years, per capita demand for biocapacity, as measured by the Ecological Footprint, has only increased in high-income countries and has remained constant or fallen in middle-and low-income nations. Consumption has increased faster than population in high-income nations, while population growth has been the dominant factor in middle-and low-income countries. Although listed in the middle-income group of countries, China showed atypical trends in the past 45 years, with a rapid increase in per capita Ecological Footprint that outstrip its gains in income. Typical trends were instead noticed for India, whose per person Ecological Footprint has fallen slightly.

Recent research has conceptualized sustainability as the environmental efficiency of wellbeing (EWEB). This concept takes into account the benefits societies are able to produce from their demands on the environment. Research along these lines indicates that countries vary widely in the efficiency with which they transform the Earth's resources into well-being. Here, we take up this finding as a puzzle to be explained. We construct a new measure of EWEB using the ecological footprint per capita (a measure of environmental consumption) and average life satisfaction (a measure of subjective well-being). We draw hypotheses from political economy, modernization, and sustainable consumption theories in the environmental social sciences. Using full information maximum likelihood estimation, we test the effects of climate, political, economic, and social factors on EWEB with a sample of 105 countries. Key findings include a negative quadratic effect of economic development on EWEB, a negative effect of income inequality, and a positive effect of social capital.

It is generally recognised that indicator-based research forms a substantial part both of the everyday practice and of the current theoretical pursuits in an extensive set of different scientific fields that relate to the socio-economic and the environmental sphere. However, the lack of an endogenous indicator's theory hinders the enhancement of indicator's research into an autonomous scientific field and subdues the indicators study to the broader ecological, social, or economic context. Thus, scientists are often bounded to the study of indicators within their specialisation area, as evidenced by the very limited number of interdisciplinary studies on the use of indicators that have been published. Based on this deficiency of the current literature, the paper elaborates on the use of indicators in the socio-economic and the environmental area, focusing on fields in which indicators are essential to their practice. Namely, the paper reviews quality-of-life, macroeconomic, environmental, welfare and sustainability indicators in order to detect similarities and differences, pertain to their practice and to the theoretical frameworks in which indicators are utilised. The study concludes that quality-of-life, welfare and sustainability indicators are supported by weak theoretical foundations, as a result to the choice of the respective fields to exploit the possible benefits of an empirical interdisciplinary perspective, a fact that leads the use of indicators to methodological inconsistencies. In contrast, macroeconomic and environmental indicators are supported by a coherent theoretical body, which is reflected in their well-organised structure and leads to their sound practice. Last but not least, the study suggests that the way the aforementioned two fields utilise indicators can provide useful guidance to the formation of future objectives in the quality-of-life, welfare and sustainability indicators’ research. Specifically, their corresponding fields should moderate their interest on composite indicators and, instead, their future research should be focused, so much on the identification of their field's key indicators that play a crucial role to the interpretation of the complex phenomena studied, as on the identification of the relationships that link these key indicators together.

To achieve the goal of sustainable development, the utilisation must be balanced with, if not less than the production side. This study thus aimed to investigate ecological security of Thailand in order to be fundamental information for appropriate development policy that fulfils both socio-economical and ecological dimensions. Ecological Footprint Accounting and Ecological Footprint Pressure Index (EFPI) were applied with data input collected from national database of the Royal Thai government offices and relevant organisations during 2005-2009. Results indicated the worse situation of ecological security every year. Thailand faced ecological deficit every year although the trend was fluctuated. Fortunately, cropland and fishing grounds were respected as ecological reverse. For biocapacity, it was decreasing from 1.46 gha/person in 2007 to 1.34 gha/person in 2009. Main decline was apparently occurred in forest area whilst cropland was found as main biocapacity of Thailand. Ecological footprint value was relatively fluctuated. Carbon and cropland were main footprint found in every year. There was however a key remark about the differences between the results of the study with those of the Global Footprint Network/WWF assessment, caused by different data input. Nevertheless, results of the evaluation could indicate the changes in production and utilisation regarding each land use type as well as the national situations of ecological reverse/deficit and ecological security which can be very useful for planners, policy managers and other relevant decision makers.

Over the past decade, an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility, often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the Ecological Footprint: While the method traditionally assumes a full life-cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility, a large number of producers (businesses and industry sectors) have started to calculate their own footprints (see www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au). Adding any producer's footprint to other producers' footprints, or to population footprints, which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs, leads to double-counting: The sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint. The committee in charge of the Footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades-old nonadditivity problem, posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints, or any other production factor: if one disallows double-counting, but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers, then one cannot impose the requirement of full life-cycle coverage; the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid doublecounting. This work demonstrates and discusses a non-arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains, into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy.

Ecological footprints (EF) have been used for more than 15 yr as an aggregate measure of sustainability of geographical regions, but also for certain products and activities. EF analysis measures the bioproductive areas required to produce resources such as crops and timber, the directly occupied areas for infrastructure, and areas for absorbing waste flows (mostly limited to carbon dioxide) in a given year for a defined population. The need to extend ecological footprint analysis to electronic products arose because so far, mobile phones have mainly been evaluated using life-cycle assessments with a focus on toxicity, end-of-life management, and energy use, thus ignoring the wider sustainability implications. This article presents the footprint results from three mobile phone case studies. To establish the land areas consumed by the mined materials used in electronic products, a database was developed based on literature data and on approximations from the density and overburden of materials. The relationship between abundance and overburden values was used in a regression analysis to estimate energy requirements in materials extraction where other data were not available. Using a life-cycle assessment approach, environmental burdens for producing and using a mobile phone were calculated and transformed into the instantaneous rate of resource consumption. Key results were that different electronic products have different ecological footprints and that the methodology proved sensitive enough to reveal differences in small electronic products and for monitoring technologies that use bioproductive space efficiently.

Renewable energies are emerging across the globe in an attempt to slow down global warming and to improve national energy security in face of the depleting fossil fuel reserves. However, the general policy of mandating the replacement of fossil fuels with the so-called “green” energies may not be as effective and environmental-friendly as previously thought, due to the secondary impacts of renewable energies on different natural resources. Thus, an integrated systems analysis framework is essential to selecting optimal energy sources that address global warming and energy security issues with minimal unintended consequences and undesired secondary impacts on valuable natural resources. This paper proposes a system of systems (SoS) framework to determine the relative aggregate footprint (RAF) of energy supply alternatives with respect to different sustainability criteria and uncertain performance values. Based on the proposed method, the RAF scores of a range of renewable and nonrenewable energy alternatives are determined using their previously reported performance values under four sustainability criteria, namely carbon footprint, water footprint, land footprint, and cost of energy production. These criteria represent environmental efficiency, water use efficiency, land use efficiency, and economic efficiency, respectively. The study results suggest that geothermal energy and biomass energy from miscanthus are the most and least resource-use efficient energy alternatives based on the performance data available in the literature. In addition, despite their lower carbon footprints, some renewable energy sources are less promising than non-renewable energy sources from a SoS perspective that considers the trade-offs between the greenhouse gas emissions of energies and their effects on water, ecosystem, and economic resources. Robustness analysis suggests that with respect to the existing performance values and uncertainties in the literature, solar thermal and hydropower have the most and least level of RAF robustness, respectively. Sensitivity analysis indicates that geothermal energy and ethanol from sugarcane, have the lowest and highest RAF sensitivity to resource availability, respectively.

Ecological footprint analysis (EFA) has been used since the early 1990s as a measure of sustainability for geographical regions, products, and activities. EFA is used as a measure of land and water ecosystems needed to provide the resources for a given population and process the waste that it produces in a globalized metric (global hectares), generally on an annual basis. As institutions seek ways to become more sustainable they have used a variety of metrics, ranking systems, and indicators to evaluate their baseline and progress towards those goals. An EFA for a large urban public university, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), was calculated as 97,601 global hectares (2.66 global hectares per total faculty, staff and students). The breakdown of sources is energy for the built environment (73%), transportation and commuting (13%), materials and waste (12%), and food (3%). UIC's ecological footprint to actual landprint ratio has a value of 1005 which is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than the other campuses that have performed EFAs. This is an indicator of the urban nature of the campus since the land resources in an urban environment are limited and the activities tend to be denser. A sensitivity analysis to examine the effect of climate change events on the footprint indicated that, if all other factors are held constant, climate change will increase the ecological footprint of UIC.

Pembantaian Marikana di Afrika Selatan mesti dibaca dari kaca mata lain. Bukan sebatas aksi buruh menuntut gaji dan diberondong peluru. Marikana dan sekitarnya merupakan sirkuit kapital yang memastikan industri militer, elektronik, otomotive dan perhiasan – di negara-negara industri terus berdenyut. Marikana salah satu titik penting yang menopang agresi militer Amerika Serikat ke negara lain.

Ecological economics was formally established in 1989 with the ambitious vision of developing a new economic paradigm embedding the social and economic systems in the biophysical world. Ecological economics had its roots in the biophysical understanding of economics that pioneers of the field Georgescu-Roegen (1971), Odum (1971), Daly (1977), Jansson (1984), Martinez-Alier (1987) and others developed while studying the thermodynamic bedrocks shared by natural and social systems. Subsequently, however, ecological economics has explicitly but controversially adopted a ‘big umbrella’ approach to methodological pluralism, focusing more on topics such as valuing nature and its functions rather than attempting to understand and quantify the biophysical roots of economic activities. Biophysical economics was established in response to these concerns, focusing more on developing analyses and models of the transformations of nature to generate wealth and approached mostly from an energy and material flows perspective. The present paper argues that to achieve its original vision ecological economics must return to its biophysical roots. Collaboration between the two fields will help the next generation of thinkers to address the socio ecological challenges of the 21st century requiring an energy transformation called for by aspirations such as the Green New Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Yanıltıcı bir zenginlik standartına dayanarak hükme varılırsa, Yeşil bir gelecek şimdikinden “daha yoksul” gözükebilir. Fakat gerçekte, daha yüksek bir yaşam standartımız olacaktır; Daha nitelikli beslenme, daha sağlıklı bedenler, ödüllendirilen iş, iyi yol arkadaşlığı, daha temiz hava, daha fazla kendine yetebilme, köstek değil, destek olan toplumlar ve içinde yaşanılacak daha güvenli bir dünya. Böylece zenginlik ile refah arasındaki fark belirginleşecektir.

Yukarıdaki tespiti özgüvenle yapan Andrew Dobson, ekolojiyi, çevrecilikten itinayla ayırarak Ekolojizm'i bir ideoloji olarak ilan ediyor. Dobson, doksanlarda başlayan teorik çalışmalarını, kitabın dördüncü baskısında oldukça olgun bir düzeye taşıyor. Yetinmeyip, reel siyasette Yeşiller’in başkan adayı oluyor ve 2005 senesinde egemen iki partili ülkesinin tarihinde görülmemiş bir başarı yakalıyor. Dolayısıyla teorisini pratikle birleştirmeyi başarıyor.

Bir kitap haz verir mi? Satırları arasında yuvarlanırken önünüze yepyeni bir dünya ve yeni bir insan modeli sunabilir mi?  Umut ve güven sağlam bir altyapıyla dantel gibi örülür mü? Ekolojinin en çetrefilli sorunları, sürpriz dolu akıl yürütmelerle böylesine kolay aşılıp anlatılabilir mi? Karmaşık, içinden çıkılması zor, savunanların bile ter dökerek andığı kavramlar ancak bir dâhinin elinden çıkmışçasına sorun olmaktan çıkabilir mi?

Dobson, tüm dünyada baskı üstüne baskı basan, yayıncısını, eleştirmenini ve yazarını şaşırtan bir ilgiyle karşılanan, pek çok üniversitede ders kitabı ilan edilen kitabında özgün ve yeni kavramlarla adeta düşünsel bir şölen sunuyor.

Increasing greenhouse gaseous concentration in the atmosphere is perturbing the environment to cause grievous global warming and associated consequences. Following the rule that only measurable is manageable, mensuration of greenhouse gas intensiveness of different products, bodies, and processes is going on worldwide, expressed as their carbon footprints. The methodologies for carbon footprint calculations are still evolving and it is emerging as an important tool for greenhouse gas management. The concept of carbon footprinting has permeated and is being commercialized in all the areas of life and economy, but there is little coherence in definitions and calculations of carbon footprints among the studies. There are disagreements in the selection of gases, and the order of emissions to be covered in footprint calculations. Standards of greenhouse gas accounting are the common resources used in footprint calculations, although there is no mandatory provision of footprint verification. Carbon footprinting is intended to be a tool to guide the relevant emission cuts and verifications, its standardization at international level are therefore necessary. Present review describes the prevailing carbon footprinting methods and raises the related issues.

Na po cząt ku XXI w. dą że nia do zrów no wa żo ne go roz wo ju osiągnę ły swo ją kul mi na cję po przez re ali za cję kon cep cji tzw. mia sta eko lo gicz ne go. Cho ciaż ter min "eco -mia sto" po cho dzi z po ło wy lat 70. XX w. i uży wa ny był w kon tek ście ru chu ochro ny śro do wiska, to obec nie roz sze rza swo je zna cze nie. Tzw. zja wi sko "eco --ci ty" jest ru chem glo bal nym znaj du ją cym opar cie w miesz kańcach miast świa do mych ro sną cych za gro żeń z po wo du zmian kli ma tu. W Azji to Chi ny i In die zna la zły się w czo łów ce kra jów roz wija ją cych ideę "eco -mia sta". Re ali zo wa ne są tam mię dzy na ro dowe pro jek ty eco -miast w Tian jin oraz Bin ha i, a czte ry in ne "eco --mia sta" pla no wa ne są ja ko ko ry ta rze eko lo gicz ne (np. Del hi -Mum bai In du strial Cor ri dor bu do wa ny z po mo cą Ja po nii). W Zjed no czo nych Emi ra tach Arab skich pod ha słem "ze ro -kar bonu" roz po czę to re ali za cję mia sta Mas dar, no wego ro dza ju aglome ra cji, która może być po wie la na na Bli skim Wscho dzie. W Afryce za mo del mia sta o zrów no wa żo nym roz wo ju uwa ża się Ha cien dę Eco -ci ties w Ke nii. Na to miast o ty tuł naj bar dziej "zie lone go mia sta" Eu ro py ry wa li zu ją Växjö (Szwe cja), Fre iburg (Niemcy) oraz St Da vid's (Wiel ka Bry ta nia). Jed nak na szcze gól ną uwagę za słu gu je wdra ża nie idei pro eko lo gicz nych w mia stach chiń skich. W od nie sie niu do da nych Świa to we go Ban ku (Tech nical As si stan ce Re port No 59012/209) sza cun ko we ob li cze nia wska zu ją na 100 ini cja tyw bu do wy miast eko lo gicz nych. Na wiązu jąc do ostat nich ba dań chiń skiej spo łecz no ści pod ką tem rozwo ju urba ni sty ki, to ok. 250 miast, pod pre tek stem pod nie sie nia swo je go po zio mu, de kla ru je chęć roz bu do wy ro zu mia nej w termi nach "eko -ci ty" czy też "low -car bon ci ty".