Measuring sustainability
Traditional environmental indicators have focused on measuring the quality of the UK’s ‘physical’ environment – such as air and water quality or wildlife. Over the years, these indicators have demonstrated either modest improvements or stabilisation. These positive trends in environmental quality have resulted in the increasing claim that the UK is breaking – or decoupling – the link between economic growth and environmental degradation. That is, our economy continues to grow without the associated environmental problems.
While in many respects this is good news, it is giving a distorted picture of sustainability. WWF believes that the principal reason for this is because we fail to take a ‘One Planet’ perspective on the UK’s sustainability, ignoring the overseas impact of our consumption patterns – known as ‘burden-shifting’. Burden-shifting is the ‘exporting’ of environmental problems abroad and is associated with our reliance on the global economy.
Latest figures suggest that over half of the resources that drive our economic growth are now extracted and processed elsewhere, with developing countries providing us with many of the goods, and increasingly services, that we consume. As traditional indicators are ‘territorial’, they fail to include the environmental impact of these ‘exported’ activities, despite the fact that it is our economy, and consumption patterns, which are responsible. Far from being ‘decoupled’ therefore, the link between our economic growth and environmental degradation remains strong; we are just failing to measure it.
As Ecological Footprint measures our consumption of natural resources, wherever it happens on the planet, it takes burden-shifting into account whilst giving an overall picture of whether or not we are within environmental limits. WWF believes this offers a more sophisticated approach to measuring environmental sustainability, and when used as part of a ‘basket’ of aggregate indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product, Quality of Life, Well Being and Economic Prosperity, gives a more accurate picture of our progress towards sustainability. Although the UK Sustainable Development Strategy included a welcome commitment to develop three new indicators on ‘Environmental Equality’, ‘Well Being’ and ‘Social Justice’, it is the devolved countries, English regions and local authorities who are leading by example and demonstrating how Ecological Footprint can be used (see box right). This is a good start, but WWF is keen to take it further.
A key component will include aligning key regional and local strategies to the UK Sustainable Development Strategy, outlining how the five principles will be integrated into decision-making and how the strategy will contribute to the UK’s four priority areas. WWF recommends that this must include:
- accepting responsibility for the global impact of our consumption of natural resources
- adopting Ecological Footprint as a ‘headline’ indicator for sustainable development
- establishing targets for the reduction of Ecological Footprint, the first step of which would be a commitment to stabilisation by 2012.
Through the Ecological Budget UK project, we will work with governments and their agencies to help them develop and adapt strategies and policies to meet this challenge, and encourage the innovative use of ecological footprint in assessing progress in both geographical areas as well as key sector groups, such as consumers, industry and business.