Eco Footprint and why it matters

This topic focuses on games, methods, activities and events that shed light and offer solutions on the impact that individuals, communities or nation have on the environment and nature from many different points of view.

The term ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT itself strictly refers to “the metric that measures how much nature we have and how much nature we use. The Footprint helps COUNTRIES improve sustainability and well-being, LOCAL LEADERS optimize public project investments and INDIVIDUALS understand their impact on the planet

Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature. On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures the ecological assets that a given population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes (including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions. The Ecological Footprint tracks the use of six categories of productive surface areas: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, forest area, and carbon demand on land.

On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s biocapacity represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land). These areas, especially if left unharvested, can also absorb much of the waste we generate, especially our carbon emissions.” (quoted from https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/ )

One of the ways individuals can better understand this topic is by calculating their own ecological footprint and after finding out the results taking specific measures on how to reduce it. There are many good resources that help calculate this impact and many of these also offer very practical advice. The most used ones are:

- http://ecologicalfootprint.com/ 

- http://www.footprintcalculator.org/ 

- https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/footprint-calculator/  

Within this project and specifically with the resources of guidebook we are putting under this umbrella of Ecological Footprint many other aspects that can be related to this, things like our impact on nature, having less waste, sustainability, climate change, etc.

Impact on nature can be viewed from a multitude of angles. 

Firstly one could look at how nationwide policies disregard or sanction certain harmful practices of industries, companies or the business sector in general, like CO2 emissions, logging, use of fossil fuels, etc. 

Another closely connected way of looking at this can be how food production practices affect the environment, how industrial farming negatively influences the ecosystem, the health and wellbeing of nature (where this is done and the animals grown for farming) and of the consumers. 

Furthermore, one could look at how communities are educated towards producing and managing their waste and how this education affects their communities from a multitude of aspects like food waste, recycling, littering in public spaces or nature, having and using or not using public transport, etc.

A last possible way of approaching the problem is by taking the individual and seeing, understanding all the daily things one does or can do in order to reduce their ecological footprint, things related to ways of transport: flying or using buses and trains instead, having multiple cars in a family or just one or commuting, using bikes/walking, watching how the electricity, water, gas is used within the household and using as little as possible, buying exactly the amount of food needed and not ‘discriminating products’ based on the way they look or even favoring local products instead of international ones which ‘travel’ much less and thus have a far smaller impact.

These are just a few ways of looking at these issues of ecological footprint. There can be much more, some focusing on products, not people, some on policies, others on nature itself, some on the ways to prevent and others on the consequences (like climate change).

Achieving more awareness and understanding is the key focus of these, but also discovering practical tools for being able to reduce our footprint. For this reason some of the activities recommended in the guidebook for this topic are non-formal simulation or role-play games through which participants are firstly informed about specific global and national issues and realities and then put in the situation of having to change these in a proactive way. Others can be simpler activities where participants can discuss and understand ways of reducing their own impact.

Here are a few Info Graphics on the topic, which better expand it and inform us about the state of affairs:

1 https://visual.ly/community/infographic/economy/rethinking-national-competitiveness-resource-constrained-world 

2 https://visual.ly/community/infographic/environment/ecological-footprint-and-investment-natural-capital 

3 https://visual.ly/community/infographic/environment/sustainable-luxury-ecological-footprint 

4 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/230246599674787137/ 

5 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/315744623847387554/ 

6 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1477812348258124/