Media Clipping — April 21, 2007, The Chronicle-Herald

When one planet is not enough

By Clare Levin

Canadians, and Nova Scotians in particular, have very big feet. Ecological feet, that is. Our "ecological footprint" is the amount of productive land area, including crop land, pasture, forests and fisheries, required to supply current human consumption and absorb wastes.

If you add up the total productive area of the Earth's land and sea, and divide it by the number of people on Earth, you discover that the Earth currently provides 1.8 hectares per person. But at today's level of demand, human beings are using 2.8 hectares per person. That's the average human's ecological footprint.

In 2003, Canada's ecological footprint was 7.6 global hectares per person, compared to 1.1 for Africans, 1.3 for Asians, 9.6 for Americans, and an average of 6.4 for high-income countries. Six years ago, Genuine Progress Index (GPI) Atlantic, a non-profit research group that is building a new index of well-being for Nova Scotia, released a report calculating this province's ecological footprint (the first provincial ecological footprint calculated in Canada), showing that Nova Scotians used 8.1 hectares per person.

What do ecological footprints of these sizes mean? They mean that globally, we are consuming more resources and producing more waste than the planet can support. If everyone in the world lived like Canadians, we would need more than three additional planets to provide the necessary resources and to absorb the wastes we produce.

Think of the ecological footprint like a financial statement. It compares our demand on, and nature's supply of, ecological resources. Humanity is now living off its ecological credit card, and can only do this by liquidating the planet's ecological assets. While this can be done for a short while, it ultimately leads to the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and agricultural land upon which our economy depends.

Every year since the mid-1980s, our ecological deficit has been contributing to a growing global ecological debt. Getting out of debt means bringing demand back within what the planet can supply.

Accounting tools like the ecological footprint can help us balance our ecological budget. We can accomplish this by reducing demand – consuming fewer resources (like turning down our thermostats and driving less), increasing the efficiency of our resource and energy use, and curbing population growth; and by increasing and caring for supply – protecting ecosystems and improving their net productivity. Taken together, such actions can help us both protect biodiversity and live well within the limits of the resources we have.

The ecological footprint is the most widely used sustainability measure in the world today, and its co-creator will be in Halifax next week to show us how we can use it effectively in Nova Scotia to leave a better world for our children.

Mathis Wackernagel will speak on Wednesday, April 25, at the RRFB Mobius Awards luncheon (11:30 a.m. at Brightwood Golf and Country Club, Dartmouth; for information or tickets, contact the Resource Recovery Fund Board at www.rrfb.com or 1-877-313-7732); and at a free public lecture beginning at 7:30 p.m. (Room 1020, Rowe Management Building, 6100 University Ave., Dalhousie University; for information, contact GPI Atlantic at clevin@gpiatlantic.org or 902-489-2524.

Clare Levin is the managing director of Genuine Progress Index (GPI) Atlantic ( www.gpiatlantic.org).