About Ecological Budget UK
Unsustainable lifestyles and patterns of unsustainable production and consumption, are identified as the major cause of continued deterioration of the global environment. The further we continue down this path of unsustainable exploitation, the more difficult it will become to protect and restore the biodiversity that our lives depend on. Humanity is effectively destroying our very life-support system. Decision-makers need to be able to assess the environmental impact of programmes, policies and actions, today and in the future.
Developing policies to address the effects of unsustainable consumption and production, requires an understanding of the associated physical flows of resources on global, regional and local levels and an assessment of these flows in terms of their environmental impacts.
Developing the evidence base
Ecological Budget UK contributes to providing the data foundation to help us build a more sustainable future. It forms part of the wider BIFFAWARD mass balance programme to map the environmental impacts of resource consumption and resource flows throughout the UK.
Environmental impacts are being quantified by regions, material streams or industry sectors presenting an enormous opportunity to inform planning, decision-making and target setting, for policies aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of natural resource usage in the UK.
Building capacity
One of the principal mechanisms for delivering the Ecological Budget UK project is to establish a detailed material flow analysis and Ecological Footprint of the entire UK by region, devolved country, and local authority area, as well as two regional pilots in the West Midlands and North East. By March 2006 we will have, for the first time, a complete and transparent set of the UK’s ‘resource accounts’. A key output of the project will also be the Resource and Energy Analysis Programme REAP, a software tool which will ‘desktop’ ecological footprint, enabling decision-makers to generate different policy scenarios to integrate ‘One Planet Living’ into strategy development.
In addition, WWF is part-funding the Sustainable Consumption and Production Network SCPNet, which will bring together key representatives from UK Government, devolved administrations and English regions, with experts on environmental economics and Ecological Footprint. The network will have strong regional foundations, establishing regional stakeholder groups to ensure the project’s work programmes are driven forward in the English regions. The network will also provide technical support to policy makers in the English Regions, build capacity and knowledge, and take forward a comprehensive work programme on sustainable consumption and production at every level of government.
Data
A new method has been developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the new calculations are based on a well established method called ‘environmentally extended input-output analysis’, which involve the conversion of expenditure data into Ecological Footprints. Read more
Project timetable
The start of Ecological Budget UK was in June 2004. This section offes information on the development timetable and timescales for key outputs. Read more
FAQ
To find out more about Ecological Footprinting and how it can be used in your area, please access the Frequently Asked Questions area of this website. Read more