Why is Ecological Footprinting relevant to Local Authorities?
Footprinting can be an effective indicator that can be used for a wide range of council and community plans and strategies (including corporate, community, partnership, environment, planning, economic, transport, waste, procurement, housing, education). The footprint enables us to compare between environmental policy options in a way that no other indicator can.
There is substantial potential to use the Footprint to evaluate whether plans are really helping to promote local sustainability and it can also be used to assess the impact of individual policy decisions made by a Local Authority or Strategic Partnership.
The Audit Commission Quality of Life indicators report (2005) recognised that individual indicators cannot always provide the ‘big picture’ or reflect cross-cutting issues adequately and it makes reference to Ecological Footprinting as an aggregate indicator that can help provide this perspective.