Abstract
The Ecological Footprint (EF) measures the amount of biologically productive land and sea area an individual, a region, all of humanity, or a human activity requires to supply the resources used for food, energy, shelter, transportation, goods and services and absorb the waste emitted in providing goods and services.
The EF of a person is calculated by considering all of the biological materials consumed and all of the biological wastes generated by that person in a given year. All these materials and wastes are then individually translated into an equivalent number of global hectares.
In 2008, Edmonton’s average EF was 8.56 global hectares per person (gha/capita; a total area for a total footprint area 6,440,612 hectares for an urban population of 752,412. If every one on earth lived like Edmontonians, we would need about 3.2 planets. Edmonton’s footprint is estimated at, which is 92 times larger than the geographic area of the city (69,980 hectares). Between 1981 and 2008, Edmonton’s EF grew by 43.6% or 1.97% per annum driven primarily by an increase in personal consumption expenditures.
The largest component of Edmonton’s 2008 EF by land category is energy land or carbon footprint (56.8%), followed by crop land (17.8%), forest land (16.3%), built area (4.9%), pasture land (2.6%), and fishing ground (1.2% or 0.10 gha/capita). When broken down by consumption category, Edmonton’s EF is dominated by shelter (30.9%) food (21.4%), government services (14.1%), services (13.9%), goods (10.5%), and transportation (9.1%). Energy or the carbon footprint is by far the key contributor to Edmonton’s EF.
In 2004 Edmonton had the second highest EF amongst Canadian cities, after Calgary. This was due primarily to Alberta’s relative large carbon footprint due to the use of coal-fired electricity and natural gas. Compared with the Canadian average EF, Edmonton’s EF in 2004 was 30% larger.
In 2008, Edmonton’s EF of 8.56 gha/capita was 3.2 times greater than the world’s average of 2.7 gha/capita and 4.1 times greater than the planet Earth’s biocapacity of 2.1 gha per person.
When compared with other countries Edmonton’s EF had one of the largest per capita ecological footprints in the world, ranking fifth behind the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait and Denmark. Edmonton exceeded the average footprint of high-income countries by over 24%. Compared to benchmark Nordic countries, Edmonton compared favourably with Denmark (8.0 gha/capita) but is 15% larger than Norway (6.9 gha/capita) and
56% larger than Sweden (5.1 gha/capita). These Nordic countries serve as reasonable benchmarks for Alberta and Edmonton given similar climatic and socio-economic conditions.
Edmonton’s relative large EF is partly due to a relatively large energy or carbon footprint (which makes up 56.8% of Edmonton’s EF) and relatively healthy high consumptive and material lifestyle. Compared to other Canadian cities Edmonton’s energy land (carbon) footprint was between 1.12 gha/capita or 23.6% larger than Ottawa and 1.81 gha/capita or 44.7% larger than Toronto. Compared to Nordic country benchmarks, Edmonton’s carbon footprint 3.5 times larger than Finland 3.8 times larger than Norway and 6.1 times larger than Sweden. Moreover, Edmonton has a lower population density than most Canadian cities and most Nordic cities.
Like most North American cities, Edmonton’s ecological footprint, in total area and per capita, far exceeds its geographic area and far exceeds its fair share of the global available biocapacity. This implies that the material lifestyles of more than three-quarters of a million Edmontonians is not sustainable if the goal were to live within the ecological capacity of the land base we occupy. In order to sustain our consumptive demands on nature requires significant imports of energy, food and other materials (the equivalent of 6.37 million hectares of land, an area almost the size of Sri Lanka which has 20 million people) into the Edmonton economy from outside our geographic area.
The good news is that Edmonton enjoys a healthy surplus of biocapacity in relationship to the provincial available biocapacity and Canada’s available biocapacity; over 2 times greater than Edmonton’s current per capita EF. However, should we feel comfortable enjoying a healthy biocapacity surplus or feel an ethical and ecological sense responsibility to other world citizens to reduce our footprint to a one-planet lifestyle?
There are many simple ways Edmontonians could reduce their ecological footprint including1:
- Use cleaner transportation.
- Add energy saving features to your home.
- Adopt energy-saving habits.
- Reducing your food footprint by eating more locally and in-season foods.
- Choose sustainable building materials, furnishings and cleaning products.
- Adopt water saving habits
- Reduce your goods and services footprint by buying less, recycling and composting.
In general, a less materially consumptive lifestyle would result in a decrease in Edmonton’s EF. However, convincing people to consume and adopt a simpler lifestyle voluntarily will be difficult, at best. The good news is that it would appear that Edmonton’s total GHG emissions per capita have been declining since their peak in 2000 along with decreasing per capita natural gas and electricity consumption. While it is not clear what factors are behind this positive trend (e.g. improved household energy efficiencies), the result is that Edmonton’s overall EF should begin to show a decline given the significance of the carbon footprint component.
Encouraging marginal shifts in behaviour should result in measurable reductions in both energy and material consumption.
About Mark Anielski
Mark Anielski is President of his family-owned corporation, Anielski Management Inc., based in Edmonton, Canada. Mark is an ecological economist specializing in measuring the sustainable well-being of communities. Most recently he has become a best-selling book author with his first book The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth, published in May of 2007, provides a new road map for countries, communities and companies to build a new economy of well-being using Mark’s Genuine Wealth assessment model for measuring and managing economic, social and ecological well-being.
Read
Edmonton’s Ecological Footprint
City of Edmonton guarantees neither the authenticity, accuracy, appropriateness nor security of the link, web site or content linked thereto.
{ 1 trackback }