Ecological Footprint Analysis

This study’s estimate of Canberra’s ecological footprint is consistent with the results of other studies being conducted in Australia, particularly those by Griffith University in Brisbane.
In world terms, Australia is among the countries with higher per person ecological footprints, including USA and Canada. Each one of us with a modern day lifestyle needs 4-5 ha of ecologically productive land to supply our food, living space and built environment and to assimilate our wastes. This is equivalent to more than 50 average sized housing blocks per
person. Such is the size of our dependence on land that is remote from where we live our daily lives.


An ecological footprint is the per person area of land required to supply the goods and services that sustain our everyday life and lifestyle. It is defined as the amount of land in six categories (crop, grazing, garden, consumed, forest and energy land) required to provide our requirements for food, housing, transport, consumer goods and services.
An approximation of the ecological footprint for Canberra is about 4.44 hectares (that is, nearly 58 average sized Canberra houseblocks) per person.

Authors Barney Foran, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Sustainable Ecosystems, and Anne Close, Masters student at the University of Canberra

University of Canberra Masters of Environmental Education students researched separate parts of the Canberra Ecological
Footprints Project: Richard Clements, Jacek Lukaszyk, David Marsden-Ballard and
Rosemary Metcalf.

Carbon emission scenarios are key inputs in sustainability and built environment strategies and policies. Decisions and direction in these documents are often based on carbon emission models which show the optimum mix of interventions required to achieve carbon emission reductions or stabilisation. Reducing or stabilising carbon emissions, however, will not lead to sustainability.

This paper focuses on the relations between society and environment in mountain territories using the EFA (Ecological Footprint Analysis) environmental accounting.
The study has selected two areas very different each other: one is representative of a pre-Alpine Valley with high level of urbanization and industrialization, the middle Trompia Valley, the other is an Alpine Valley suffering from decades of production delocalization and, consequently, of depopulation and territory abandonment, the middle Camonica Valley.
The study shows that this accounting system is able to represent the territorial complexity in detail and in a scientifically robust way.

The human society cannot be considered in isolation from nature; and human activities are always in need of environmental analyses. Therefore, communities require tools for determining the biosphere dynamics and the biophysical limitations of earth in order to assess the systems subdued
by humans. The ecological footprint is among the most important tools in this regard. It evaluates the relationship between humans and resources and is defined as the total area of land and water in different ecological levels,
needed to produce all the resources that people consume, and absorb the wastes they produce. The ecological footprint calculation is in fact the expansion of a quantitative method to illustrate the importance of investigating the effects the inhabitants’ consumption has on the productive
and non-productive land systems. This method can be employed in any area with comparable results. In this study, the ecological footprint of Isfahan was estimated considering the five basic factors of urban life: food, shelter, transportation, goods, and services. In 2011, the per capita ecological
footprint was calculated as 3.9 global hectares. This means that, the productive land and sea required for providing the needed resources and the sinks to absorb the waste resulting from the activities of each Isfahan citizen is 3.9 global hectares.

The footprints in this study, which were considered to have been made by ungulates, were discovered on mudstone that was approximately 5 cm thick, near an abundant mud-cracked plane located on the stratigraphic subsurface of the late Oligocene Karayün Formation, which crops out over wide areas in southern Sivas (Turkey) and has terrestrial, fluvial sediment characteristics. These ungulate footprints documented from the late Oligocene of the Karayün Formation in southern Sivas represent the first reported vertebrates in Anatolia. The footprints of three different species of ungulates were identified. The shapes, depth, and widths of the footprints provided some basic ichnotaxonomic and TrackMaker information, but based on the poor preservation of the footprints, ichnotaxa identification is difficult. This study aimed to use an ichnotaxonomic approach to contribute to the late Oligocene biochronology in Anatolia due to the small amount of footprint findings in the literature. Ungulate herds left mixed footprints in wetland areas along the banks of flooding rivers. The late Oligocene period was a time characterized by large climate changes in Anatolia; hence, it may have hosted different ecosystems and taxa.

Renewable energies are emerging across the globe in an attempt to slow down global warming and to improve national energy security in face of the depleting fossil fuel reserves. However, the general policy of mandating the replacement of fossil fuels with the so-called “green” energies may not be as effective and environmental-friendly as previously thought, due to the secondary impacts of renewable energies on different natural resources. Thus, an integrated systems analysis framework is essential to selecting optimal energy sources that address global warming and energy security issues with minimal unintended consequences and undesired secondary impacts on valuable natural resources. This paper proposes a system of systems (SoS) framework to determine the relative aggregate footprint (RAF) of energy supply alternatives with respect to different sustainability criteria and uncertain performance values. Based on the proposed method, the RAF scores of a range of renewable and nonrenewable energy alternatives are determined using their previously reported performance values under four sustainability criteria, namely carbon footprint, water footprint, land footprint, and cost of energy production. These criteria represent environmental efficiency, water use efficiency, land use efficiency, and economic efficiency, respectively. The study results suggest that geothermal energy and biomass energy from miscanthus are the most and least resource-use efficient energy alternatives based on the performance data available in the literature. In addition, despite their lower carbon footprints, some renewable energy sources are less promising than non-renewable energy sources from a SoS perspective that considers the trade-offs between the greenhouse gas emissions of energies and their effects on water, ecosystem, and economic resources. Robustness analysis suggests that with respect to the existing performance values and uncertainties in the literature, solar thermal and hydropower have the most and least level of RAF robustness, respectively. Sensitivity analysis indicates that geothermal energy and ethanol from sugarcane, have the lowest and highest RAF sensitivity to resource availability, respectively.

Saint Martin’s island is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Bangladesh. It is also an ecological
hot spot. It is the only place in Bangladesh where coral colonies are found. At the same time St.
Martin’s Island also has an important ecological value as one of the few remaining nesting places in
the region for several species of globally threatened marine turtles, as well as being a wintering site
for migratory birds. There are also commercial important seaweed and oyster and shell.

Classical economists, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, argued that international trade was a source of wealth and a strategy of economic growth in which all participants were bound to win. Theories like that, drawing upon harmony in international trade, began to be challenged in the 20th century, when the theory of unequal exchange warned that a tendency to deterioration of barter terms of trade favoured industrialised countries and played against underdeveloped ones. Although criticisms of this sort are noteworthy, they largely rely on monetary prices, which can account for relative rather than absolute scarcity. Monetary prices have hardly proven to be able either to tackle the damages caused to the environment or to reckon them in natural resource-intensive activities, such as agribusiness. The “ecological footprint” method seeks to assess commodity trading from an environmental standpoint, by calculating the land (or water) area needed to meet certain consumption patterns. Hence, it allows to figure out what proportion of others’ territory is taken over by natural resource-poor countries, as well as whether and how these pay those back. This study aims at measuring the quantity of land (in hectares) used by Brazil’s agribusiness to hold a positive economic trade balance, thereby allowing to ascertain whether trade is carried out in a fair or uneven way and how much such a trade balance is financed by an ecological debt. The results lay bare that the Brazilian agribusiness trade is unfair.

In an increasingly resource constrained world, sustainable development have to become specific and accountable. In this paper is presented the importance of ecological footprint assesment, as accountable sustainability indicator. Globaly acepted standard, to provide a common framework, requirements and recommendations for measurment and reduction of the ecological footprint, still does not exist. This paper is analyzing the benefits of the new ISO standards development in this field.

Statement of the problem: Metropolitan areas in the more and less developed countries of the world have formed essentially due to the utilization of economies of scale, and successively the metropolitan regions are formed through spatial-functional linkages of the metropolitan areas with their peripheral environments. This is while the increasing density and intensifying activities within metropolitan regions are not directly related and relevant to the principle of economies of scale; considering that the density and boundaries are determined and affected by population and ecological thresholds. Unplanned metropolitan growth and departure from the mentioned thresholds creates and accumulates spatial problems in metropolitan regions, especially in the peripheral natural environments. Many metropolitan regions have the experience of unplanned expansion and their damaged and problematic natural peripheral environments. This have led to the production and reproduction of many urban and...

The report jointly designed by WWF-Russia and the Global Footprint Network contains data on the Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity of the Russian Federation. The report makes it possible to assess the sustainability of regional development and provides authorities and business leader with a toolkit to evaluate the effectiveness of
sustainable development. This study also examines the possibilities of using biocapacity and ecological footprint indicators to assess investment attractiveness of regions and sectors of the Russian economy. The project is the first attempt to apply footprint methodology at the regional level in Russia.

Los autores abordan diferentes aspectos de la transición energética en México desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria. 
La publicación comienza por discutir los co-beneficios y retos para una transición energética sustentable en el contexto de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sustentable. A través de los capítulos, los autores discuten:  1) Los retos del desarrollo energético en América Latina 2) Derechos humanos y responsabilidad empresarial en el sector energético 3) Retos para el crecimiento económico sustentable en México y la paradoja de la abundancia 4) Energía y carbono en el consumo de los hogares mexicanos 5) Ampliando el concepto de pobreza energética desde una perspectiva de necesidades humanas fundamentales 6) Evolución regulatoria del sector energético en México y 7) La consulta previa en México y la gobernanza global del desarrollo.

Transición energética; Objetivos de Desarrollo Sustentable; co-beneficios; pobreza energética; desarrollo; consumo de hogares; necesidades humanas fundamentales, gobernanza, derechos humanos; extractivismo; regulación energética; Consulta pública; Responsabilidad Corporativa, inter-disciplinario; México

Growing attention to potential environmental damage caused by the UN has led to calls for an environmental strategy for UN peace operations. In 2013, the UN Security Council for the first time gave a peacekeeping operation (the UN mission in Mali) a direct mandate to address the environmental consequences of its activities. This came in parallel with measures taken by the Departments for Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support (DPKO/DFS), including the adoption of an Environmental Policy for UN Field Missions in 2009 and the creation of an Environment Section in 2016, which has developed an Environment Strategy. The number of staff dedicated to environmental issues has also increased at headquarters and in the field, and training materials focused on environmental issues have been developed. In addition, a number of small-scale success stories have provided best practices and lessons learned for other missions.

Natural gas is often promoted as the most environmentally friendly of all fossil fuels, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a modern and efficient way of transporting it. Some research has been carried out into the local environmental impact of LNG facilities, but almost none into aspects related to climate change.

What actually causes most greenhouse gas emissions, LNG or pipelines? This question is highly relevant for climate change, but in practice the choice of transport option for natural gas in the real world will depend on the cost of CO2 emissions. How these costs play out depend on the volume of gas to be transported, the distance etc.

This article therefore develops a formal model for comparing LNG and pipelines. In particular, it evaluates how variations in the prices of natural gas and greenhouse gas emissions affect the relative cost-efficiency of these two options.

The paper concludes that, at current price levels for natural gas and CO2 emissions, the distance from field to consumer and the volume of natural gas transported are the main determinants of transport costs. The pricing of natural gas and greenhouse emissions influence the relative cost-efficiency of LNG and pipeline transport, but only to a limited degree at current price levels. Because more energy is required for the LNG process (especially for fuelling liquefaction) than for pipelines at distances below 9100 km, LNG is more exposed to variability in the price of natural gas and greenhouse gas emissions up to this distance. If the prices of natural gas and/or greenhouse gas emission rise dramatically in the future, this will affect the choice between pipelines and LNG. Such a price increase will be favourable for pipelines relative to LNG.

A nivel mundial se tiene presente que ciertos fenómenos meteorológicos, así como "patrones climáticos", han sufrido cambios en frecuencia, intensidad, duración y época en la que se dan, esto en función de los registros y se nota en la lluvia, viento, temperatura, deshielo de glaciares, por decir algunos.

Sustainability in human populations has been defined as the achievement of above 0.8 on the Human Development Index (HDI) and the achievement of an Ecological Footprint (EF) below 1.8 global hectares per person. This paper reviews this definition (HDI-EF definition) to understand how it relates to the built environment. It analyses the two indices; the Ecological Footprint and the Human Development Index, that are used in this definition and breaks them down into their constituent parts. The implications of the EF and HDI constituents for the built environment then are ascertained through a process which translates these into minimum standards and built environment characteristics. The built environment characteristics identified being aspects of the built environment that enable occupants to achieve the ecological footprint and human development index targets outlined in the HID-EF definition. In order to understand these characteristics better, criteria are developed to assess the existence, and nature, of these characteristics in a built environment. These criteria are applied to an urban environment in South Africa and outline results presented.

As global consumption increases we are faced with a major threat; exceeding the Earth's capacity to create new resources and absorb waste. In the present study we develop a self-improving, market-driven process of ecological footprinting of products, proposed as a means to give consumers a real choice in actively monitoring and reducing their ecological impact. We conduct a small scale case study to illustrate first stage calculations. A wider market application of higher accuracy second or third stage calculations changes market information dynamics, as ecological information is internalized for consumers. Potential impacts on purchasing behavior, demand and eco-technological innovation are discussed.

One of the essential parts within the transition towards sustainable economies, is the way how higher education prepares its students for their future role in business. In order for them to contribute to corporate social responsibility within the enterprise context, they need specific skills and competences related to sustainable development. Derived from the societal role of business schools in preparing the future business leaders and entrepreneurs, the focus of this paper is the contribution of business schools to sustainability integration. The topic could be wider situated within the context of higher education for sustainable development, which aims at integrating competences for sustainable development into the curriculum, and integrating sustainability measures within campus operations, research and societal role. This reflective article looks at a business school context as a case for institutional efficiency measures. It describes how business schools could implement efficiency measures and apply instruments within their own context, looking at the campus as a ‘living laboratory’ for sustainability innovation. Three tools and instruments to foster sustainability integration on campus, its benefits and possible problems are described: Assessment Instrument for Sustainability in Higher Education; Ecological Footprint Analysis; and Principles for Responsible Management Education. It builds upon the data and results from several action research projects within two Belgian business schools. As a conclusion, the article reflects upon the essential characteristics of these initiatives, as a way to connect sustainability initiatives to efficiency measures. This may be an opportunity for business schools, not yet used to its full potential yet.

Humanekologiska avdelningen Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi Lunds universitet Magisteruppsats HEKX02 VT 2010 Handledare: Andreas Malm Sveriges klimatskuld Belyst och beräknad med olika metoder Av Rikard Warlenius Pers.nr 700123-0478 1

After briefly tracing the emergence and persistence of the footprint trope, I then read it through (and against) an alternate ontology in order to intensify the trope’s ontological dimensions and limitations. What ways of being in the world does the footprint—and its implicit invitation to tread lightly—de/prescribe, and how does that ontology itself do rhetorical work that may in fact run counter to the sentiments of its proponents? The chapter concludes with an affirmative recovery of the footprint trope in service of a more robust environmentalism. With this chapter, I want to think more intensely about our footprints. For instance, I want to re-emphasize movement, embodiment, place and inscription, which are all sidelined or even implicitly disparaged by our particular employment of footprint. What is it to place one’s feet and to inscribe with one’s own body? In making environmentalism a question of a footprint’s size, do we lose the nuance of kind, of quality? Privileging the quantitative over the qualitative potentially undermines other available means of persuasion. I want to think about/with the footprint metaphor beyond size and measurement—not because such approaches are wrong, but because they severely limit our ability to think through the trails we make, the paths we trace as we move with/in an environment, which is something more than an already existing container.

Güvenlik ve çevre bağlantısıyla ilgili tartışma, 1980’lerden beri gelişmiştir. Bu bağlantıdan şüphe duyanlar ve bağlantıyı destekleyenler, kavramsal, siyasi ve metodolojik zeminlerde tartışmayı sürdürürken, tartışmanın bağlamı da jeopolitik olayların gelişimi ve iklim değişimi ile ilgili araştırmaların ilerlemesiyle kendiliğinden değişmiştir. Makale, tartışmanın farklı aşamalarındaki temel varsayımları ve 21. yüzyılda düşünce yapısında ortaya çıkan yenilikleri araştırmaktadır. Erken dönem literatürünün ise, birey güvenliği ve hassasiyetleri ile kaynak savaşlarının farklı sonuçlarına odaklandığını göstermektedir. Ayrıca çevresel hassasiyetlerin, insanlığın ortak yaşam alanını korumak ve dünyanın marjinalleşmiş alanlarındaki fakir halkların yaşamda kalmasını sağlamak amacıyla siyasallara dahil edilmesinin önemi de vurgulanmaktadır.

Many island cities have vulnerable ecosystems, yet island ecosystems also present special challenges for research. Ecological footprint analysis is an effective method of evaluating the ability of island cities to engage in regional ecological sustainable development. This study uses ecological footprint analysis combined with the ArcGIS platform to evaluate the ecological security of 14 neighborhoods on Zhoushan Island (Zhejiang Province, China) in 2010, 2013, and 2015. The partial least squares regression model is used to explore factors affecting spatial and temporal differences in ecological security in the island’s neighborhoods and to help optimize the island’s ecological sustainable development. Results reveal that Zhoushan Island’s per capita ecological footprint decreased from 7.355 hm2 in 2010 to 4.662 hm2 in 2015, yet throughout the study period, the per capita ecological footprint remained higher than the per capita ecological carrying capacity in all neighborhoods. Although the island’s ecological security has gradually improved, there continue to be large ecological deficits and ecological pressure. To improve the island city’s ecological security, we should optimize the mode of urban development, develop renewable energy sources, protect ecologically valuable land, improve the scale and quality of urban zones and transportation infrastructure, and improve residents’ industrial and consumption structures.

The authors address different aspects of the energy transition in Mexico from an interdisciplinary perspective. The publication begins by discussing the co-benefits and challenges for a sustainable energy transition in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. Throughout the chapters, the authors discuss: 1) The challenges of energy development in Latin America 2) Human rights and corporate responsibility in the energy sector 3) Challenges for sustainable economic growth in Mexico and the paradox of abundance 4) Energy and carbon in the consumption of Mexican households 5) Expanding the concept of energy poverty from a perspective of fundamental human needs 6) Regulatory evolution of the energy sector in Mexico and 7) Public consultation in Mexico and global governance of development. keywords: Energy transition; Sustainable Development Goals; co-benefits; energy poverty; development; households; fundamental human needs, governance, human rights; extractivism; energy regulatory; public consultation; Corporate Responsibility, inter-disciplinary

• Continue to reinforce oversight by systematically monitoring performance indicators and fostering data ownership and accountability. • Extend DFS's partnership with UNEP. • Advocate for member states to support sustainable environmental management in peace operations. The final recommendation is long-term: • Develop comprehensive indicators and an integrated approach to environmental concerns.

Ecological footprint was combined with economic input-output analysis in order to identify the economic structures causing the overuse of biological resources. These structures were analyzed with the use of structural decomposition, path analysis and sensitivity analysis and compared to the structures which drive economic growth. The scope of the analysis was the Finnish national economy during 2002-2005. Based on the results increases in gross domestic product (GDP) and ecological footprint were found to be different subsystems of the economy. This aspect was previously hidden by country level aggregate indicators. Ecological footprint was increased by the production and consumption of primary commodities, such as wood, paper, fish, crops, animal products and energy as well as construction. In contrast, GDP growth was caused mainly by increased demand in service sectors such as renting and owning apartments, trade and business services as well as governmental services, health, education and social work. The two systems overlapped only in dairy products and forest products, which had major influences to both indicators. Ecoefficiency improved overall in the economy between 2002 and 2005 especially in some industries, such as sawmilling and electricity production. However growth in consumption resulted in increased environmental impacts nevertheless.

Different methods aimed to quantify the effects of human activities on the natural environment have been developed. One of them is ecological footprint that is the total area of land, to produce all the resources a population consumes and to absorb all of the wastes it generates. An important impact of human activities on the environment is climate change that relates to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The most important gas is CO 2 which is released to atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels in daily life of human activities. A main part of increasing CO 2 in urban atmosphere is road transportation; so estimation of ecological footprint of it can describe the situation of consuming fossil fuels in a city. To do so, the amount of different fuels consumed in a period of time, the area under transportation constructions and also the energy consumed in the process of network construction and annual road maintenance should be regarded. In this study the ecological footprint of transportation activities in the city of Isphahan in central Iran was estimated at 0.4 global hectares. It means that for each Isphahan resident, 0.4 global hectares area is needed to sequester the CO 2 released to atmosphere from different transportation activities.

Use of parameters to train a Artificial Neural Network to predict the Human Development Index (HDI) of a country. The selected parameters like Human Capital Index or Gini Coefficient, are evaluated to know the importance for increasing the HDI, showing us the necessary correlations to know how to increase the performance of a country and it's life levels

With the growing environmental crisis affecting our globe, ideas to weigh economic or social progress
by the ‘energy input’ necessary to achieve it are increasingly gaining acceptance. This question
is intriguing and is being dealt with by a growing number of studies, focusing on the environmental
price of human progress. Even more intriguing, however, is the question of which factors of social
organization contribute to a responsible use of the resources of our planet to achieve a given social
result (‘smart development’). In this essay, we present the first systematic study on how migration –
or rather, more concretely, received worker remittances per GDP – helps the nations of our globe to
enjoy social and economic progress at a relatively small environmental price. We look at the effects
of migration on the balance sheets of societal accounting, based on the ‘ecological price’ of the combined
performance of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research
and development, and social cohesion. Feminism in power, economic freedom, population density,
the UNDP education index as well as the receipt of worker remittances all significantly contribute
towards a ‘smart overall development’, while high military expenditures and a high world economic
openness are a bottleneck for ‘smart overall development’.


Keywords: migration, remittances, smart development, ecological footprint

Geothermal power plant (PLTP) development is an effort to fulfill the energi need of the region. Development of this power plant is based on effectivity and sustainability energy supply for the local demand. The existence of geothermal power plant gives opportunity and as well as thread for the regional development. The construction site of PLTP should be in a proper and secure location. The construction, facilities and infrastructure of PLTP changes the surounding environment (land using, plantations, forest, and settlement) and also can reduce the regional capacity building. This paper present an approach to reduce the occurance of the disaster or negative environmental impact caused by decreasing the regional capacity building. This ecological approach is called ecological footprint. Based on this approach, it will be shown an example as a region referrals for designing PLTP development. In this ecological approach, compare a land that required to produce a continuous natural resources and assimilating wastes (biocapacity) with consumption level of natural resources due to human activity. This study can provide regional guidance for developing PLTP based on efectivity and sustainability aspect to support local people and environment. Its case study is geothermal potentional development in Mount Ijen, East Java using remote sensing method to determine land cover characteristics of study area which dominated by forests and plantation. Therefore, the study becomes very important guidance for developing PLTP in this region.

Sydney is increasingly oriented to compete in the global city stakes. This necessitates achieving higher rates of economic growth than rival cities, particularly in sectors such as international finance. Economic growth has spatial and resource dimensions that conflict with many visions of what constitutes a sustainable city. Sydney is Australia’s largest vortex city, sucking in resources for production and consumption and using other parts of the planet to assimilate wastes.

This paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of competing definitions and measuring techniques to identify sustainable cities, including Ecological Footprint Analysis, Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously and Sustainability Indicators. It applies these and other concepts to
Sydney, thereby highlighting the critical choice of definition and measuring technique in debates about the sustainability of cities. The conclusion identifies the importance of communication, education and implementing appropriate processes to reduce the most unsustainable practices in Sydney, and in other Australian cities.

The municipal sewage treatment in Germany is traditionally centralized and allows for a high disposal security. The implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD) showed that the central target, the so-called ‘good ecological state’ has not yet been reached in 90% of all surface water bodies. A common and widespread measure to reach said target is the improvement of sewage treatment plants (STP). A large part of the expenses for that has to be shouldered by local communities. But many rural communities already have to manage high costs caused by the modernization of the sewage pipe system. And as the size of the rural population decreases continuously, the per capita burden increases. This raises the question whether the construction of a new sewage treatment plant is the most efficient way to improve the water quality in rural areas. A comprehensive approach has been developed for answering this question, consisting of 1) biological and physico-chemical wastewater anal...

Book Description:
According to many authorities the impact of humanity on the earth is already overshooting the earth’s capacity to supply humanity’s needs. This is an unsustainable position. This book does not focus on the problem but on the solution, by showing what it is like to live within a fair earth share ecological footprint.

The authors describe numerical methods used to calculate this, concentrating on low or no cost behaviour change, rather than on potentially expensive technological innovation. They show what people need to do now in regions where their current lifestyle means they are living beyond their ecological means, such as in Europe, North America and Australasia. The calculations focus on outcomes rather than on detailed discussion of the methods used. The main objective is to show that living with a reduced ecological footprint is both possible and not so very different from the way most people currently live in the west.

The book clearly demonstrates that change in behaviour now will avoid some very challenging problems in the future. The emphasis is on workable, practical and sustainable solutions based on quantified research, rather than on generalities about overall problems facing humanity.


Review of the book:
"Informed, informative, scholarly, insightful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking... [A] vitally necessary addition to professional, academic, corporate, and governmental library Environmental Studies reference collections." - The Midwest Book Review, June 2013

"‘Sustainability’ is a term that is bandied about all the time, casually applied to anything that is slightly better than the usual, however marginal the improvement might be. This is a book that corrects that mis-use, setting out exactly what a sustainable lifestyle actually entails." – Jeremy Williams, Make Wealth History

"The key contribution of this collection is the provision of extensive, detailed comparative assessments of the relative ecological footprint associated with different dimensions of our resource consumption, providing at times surprising insights into the comparative impact of, for example, automobile versus air travel, or the ecological footprint reduction that could be achieved with a lowering of meat consumption." – Canadian Studies in Population, Debra J. Davidson, University of Alberta

About the editors (and authors):
Robert and Brenda Vale are Professorial Research Fellows in the School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. They share common research interests in ecological footprinting and sustainable building design, and are both currently working on the new Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) project to deliver ecological footprinting and systems approaches to sustainable development of communities.

One of the essential parts within the transition towards sustainable economies, is the way how higher education prepares its students for their future role in business. In order for them to contribute to corporate social responsibility within the enterprise context, they need specific skills and competences related to sustainable development. Derived from the societal role of business schools in preparing the future business leaders and entrepreneurs, the focus of this paper is the contribution of business schools to sustainability integration. The topic could be wider situated within the context of higher education for sustainable development, which aims at integrating competences for sustainable development into the curriculum, and integrating sustainability measures within campus operations, research and societal role. This reflective article looks at a business school context as a case for institutional efficiency measures. It describes how business schools could implement effic...

As global consumption increases we are faced with a major threat; exceeding the Earth's capacity to create new resources and absorb waste. In the present study we develop a self-improving, market-driven process of ecological footprinting of products, proposed as a means to give consumers a real choice in actively monitoring and reducing their ecological impact. We conduct a small scale case study to illustrate first stage calculations. A wider market application of higher accuracy second or third stage calculations changes market information dynamics, as ecological information is internalized for consumers. Potential impacts on purchasing behavior, demand and eco-technological innovation are discussed.