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Ecological footprint

© WWF-Canon / Michel GUNTHERThe concept of environmental limits is vital because, as WWF research shows, if everyone on the planet consumed as much energy and natural resources as the average UK citizen, we would need three planets to support life on Earth – a luxury we clearly don’t have.

The Living Planet Report 2004, WWF’s biennial progress report on global sustainable development and biodiversity conservation shows that between 1970 and 2000, global biodiversity declined by 40 per cent, while humanity’s demand for natural resources increased by over 50 per cent. Critically, it also shows that our ‘demand’ for resources is now out-stripping nature’s ‘supply’ by about 20 per cent. This is known as ‘overshoot’ and leads to the irreversible depletion of the Earth’s eco-systems and their ability to renew the natural resources upon which we depend.

© WWF - Canon/M Roggo WWF believes this correlation, between humanity’s increasing consumption of natural resources and declining species and habitats, clearly demonstrates that we are breaching the planet’s environmental limits. As the UK Sustainable Development Strategy now highlights, this means we can not be acting sustainably.

WWF’s programme of work on Ecological Footprint has:

• a vision that, by 2030, the global Ecological Footprint is sustainable;
• a goal that, by 2012, the UK’s Ecological Footprint is stabilised; and
• a short term aim that UK governments and devolved administrations accept responsibility for the global impact of UK consumption, adopt Ecological Footprint as a headline indicator and develop strategies to reduce our impact.
  

The challenge is straightforward: we need to start making the right choices – different choices – so everyone in the world can have their fair share of prosperity within the planet’s environmental limits. In the UK, we must accept that our current consumption patterns are having a global environmental impact and start shifting our society from a ‘three planet lifestyle’ to ‘One Planet Living’.