Indicator Assessment
Ecological footprint of European countries
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The total ecological footprint for the EU-28 countries increased rapidly during the 1960s and 70s, and has remained relatively constant since the 1980s. The region’s total biocapacity, however, has changed very little since 1961. The picture is similar for the EEA-33 countries.
The pan-European ecological footprint has been increasing almost constantly since 1961, while biocapacity(1) has decreased. This results in an ever larger deficit, with negative consequences for the environment within and outside Europe.
(1) The capacity of ecosystems to produce useful biological materials and to absorb waste materials generated by humans, using current management schemes and extraction technologies.
Ecological footprint variation per region
Note: Total ecological footprint is represented by the colored areas (as the product of per person footprint and population size); total biocapacity is represented by the areas within orange lines. As of 2010, the EU-28 had approximately 503 million citizens, and a biocapacity of 2.2 global hectares per capita.
Europe’s ecological deficit[1] is considerable; its total demand for ecological goods and services exceeds what its own ecosystems supply. The EU-28 region’s footprint is over twice the size of its biocapacity; the same is true for the EEA-33. If everyone on the planet had the same ecological footprint as the average resident of the EU-28, we would need approximately 2.6 Earths to support our demands on nature. The pan-European ecological deficit per person is significantly smaller, as shown in Figure 1.
Nations can operate with an ecological deficit in three ways: by drawing down their own stocks of ecological capital; by importing products and thus using the biocapacity of other nations; or by exploiting the global commons, such as by releasing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning into the atmosphere. Some nations overdraw their own biocapacity for export while simultaneously importing additional biocapacity from elsewhere. On a global scale, all nations cannot be net importers, and nations that rely on competition for increasingly scarce imports will be increasingly at risk.
In a world that is already in overshoot, Europe’s ecological deficit can have major environmental implications, including degradation of ecological assets, depletion of natural reserves, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. While the footprint does not measure biodiversity loss directly, it tracks global pressures on biodiversity and can be used to complement other measures of ecosystem-specific impacts on biodiversity (Galli et al., 2014).
Figure 4 shows that Europe is not the only region where the ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity; North America, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East/Central Asia regions also have ecological deficits. On the other hand, Europe beyond the EU has a biocapacity that is slightly larger than its Footprint.
[1] Ecological deficit (or reserve) refers to the difference between the biocapacity and the ecological footprint of a region or country. An ecological deficit occurs when the footprint of a population exceeds the biocapacity of the area available to that population. Conversely, an ecological reserve exists when the biocapacity of a region exceeds its population’s footprint. At the global level, the ecological deficit is equivalent to “global overshoot.”
FURTHER INFORMATION
- Global Footprint Network: www.footprintnetwork.org.
- Galli, A., M. Wackernagel, K. Iha, and E. Lazarus. 2014. Ecological Footprint: Implications for biodiversity.Biological Conservation 173 (2014) 121–132.
Indicator definition
The ecological footprint for Europe is a measure of how much biologically productive land and water area Europe requires to produce all the biological resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates, using prevailing technology and management. This area could be located anywhere in the world. This can be compared with the biocapacity of the planet or that available within a given region. Both biocapacity and the ecological footprint are measured in global hectares.
Units
Global hectares per person (gha).
Policy context and targets
Context description
This indicator provides a quantitative assessment of global and local overshoot; the extent to which humanity's footprint, or demand for ecosystem resources, exceeds biocapacity and the planet's ability to regenerate these resources. This overshoot means ecosystem stocks are being liquidated, and untreated wastes are accumulating in the biosphere. While it is not known precisely how long various ecosystems can tolerate this growing ecological debt, this growing pressure will eventually contribute to ecosystem degradation or failure.
The regional or national ecological footprint is the area of productive biosphere required to provide all of the biological resources that the population of a region or nation consumes and to absorb the wastes it generates, using prevailing technologies and resource management.
National ecological footprint accounting provides a number of key indicators such as the footprint of consumption, the footprint of production, or the biocapacity of a nation. Hence, it can provide assessments of aspects such as: (1) Europe's demands on the land and sea area within its own borders; (2) Europe's demands on the land and sea area outside its borders; and (3) Europe's demand on specific ecosystem types. Although the aggregate consumption of material resources by European households is more than double the available biocapacity within Europe, Europe's domestic extraction of biological resources is still below Europe's total biocapacity and has stayed at about the same level in recent years.
Relation of the indicator to the focal area
The 'ecological footprint of European countries' (i.e., the consumption footprint) directly measures Europe's resource use compared to what is available globally. In other words, it shows to what extent the level of consumption is replicable on a global scale. It can also measure local extraction rates. This means the accounts can provide information about global and local sustainability.
Targets
2020 EU biodiversity targets: Target 6
Related policy documents
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EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy
in the Communication: Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy to 2020 (COM(2011) 244) the European Commission has adopted a new strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the EU by 2020. There are six main targets, and 20 actions to help Europe reach its goal. The six targets cover: - Full implementation of EU nature legislation to protect biodiversity - Better protection for ecosystems, and more use of green infrastructure - More sustainable agriculture and forestry - Better management of fish stocks - Tighter controls on invasive alien species - A bigger EU contribution to averting global biodiversity loss
Methodology
Methodology for indicator calculation
The ecological footprint uses a common standardised measurement unit, global hectares (gha), to make results comparable globally and across scales. A global hectare is a biologically productive hectare of land and water with the world average productivity for a given year. Hectares of productive area are converted into global hectares by weighting each area in proportion to its productivity potential for biomass. Because world bioproductivity varies slightly from year to year, the value of a global hectare may change slightly from year to year.
The ecological footprint represents all competing human demands for biologically productive space. National calculations, as generated with the National Footprint Accounts, are more limited because of existing data sets, particularly on the waste side, where emissions are limited to anthropogenic carbon. In the National Footprint Accounts, the footprint results for each country include the biological resources and carbon emissions embodied within goods and services that are consumed by people living in that country. Resources consumed for the production of goods and services exported to another country are added to the country where the goods and services are consumed, and not to the country where they are produced.
The methodology of ecological footprint accounts builds on six assumptions:
The annual amounts of biological resources consumed and wastes generated by countries are tracked by national and international organisations.
- The quantity of biological resources appropriated for human use is directly related to the amount of bioproductive land area necessary for their regeneration and for the assimilation of wastes.
- By weighting each area in proportion to its usable biomass productivity (that is, its potential annual production of usable biomass), the different areas can be expressed in terms of a standardised average productive hectare (a global hectare).
- The overall demand in global hectares can be aggregated by adding all mutually exclusive resource-providing and waste-assimilating areas required to support the demand.
- Aggregated human demand (Ecological Footprint) and nature’s supply (biocapacity) can be directly compared to each other.
- Area demand can exceed area supply.
A more detailed description of the methodology can be found in the method paper (Borucke et al., 2013) available at http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/methodology/.
The template of the National Footprint Accounts, 2014 edition is explained in the “Working Guidebook to the National Footprint Accounts 2014”, available at http://www.footprintnetwork.org/images/article_uploads/NFA%202014%20Guidebook%207-14-14.pdf.
The method continues to be further developed under the scientific guidance of the National Accounts Committee of Global Footprint Network. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/national_accounts_review_committee/
Methodology for gap filling
Some minimal data cleaning excludes extreme outliers. Also, if data points are missing between reported years, the gaps are filled by extrapolating from adjacent years.
Methodology references
- Accounting for demand and supply of the biosphere's regenerative capacity: The National Footprint Accounts’ underlying methodology and framework Borucke, M., Moore, D., Cranston, G., Gracey, K., Iha, K., et al., 2013. Accounting for demand and supply of the biosphere’s regenerative capacity: the National Footprint Accounts’ underlying methodology and framework. Ecological Indicators 24, 518–533.
- An exploration of the mathematics behind the Ecological Footprint Galli, A., Kitzes, J., Wermer, P., Wackernagel, M., Niccolucci, V., Tiezzi, E., 2007. An exploration of the mathematics behind the Ecological Footprint. International Journal of Ecodynamics. 2 (4), 250–257.
- Establishing national natural capital accounts based on detailed ecological footprint and biocapacity assessments Monfreda, C., Wackernagel, M., Deumling, D., 2004. Establishing national natural capital accounts based on detailed ecological footprint and biocapacity assessments. Land Use Policy21, 231–246.
Uncertainties
Methodology uncertainty
No uncertainty has been specified
Data sets uncertainty
No uncertainty has been specified
Rationale uncertainty
MAIN DISADVANTAGES OF THE INDICATOR
Several important aspects of sustainable use/management are not being measured by the ecological footprint:
- Non-ecological aspects of sustainability: Having a footprint smaller than the biosphere is a necessary minimum condition for a sustainable society, but it is not sufficient. For instance, although social well being also needs to be considered, the footprint does not do this.
- Depletion of non-renewable resources: The footprint does not track the amount of non-renewable resource stocks, such as oil, natural gas, coal or metal deposits. The footprint associated with these materials is based on the regenerative capacity used or compromised by their extraction and, in the case of fossil fuels, the area required to assimilate the wastes they generate.
- Inherently unsustainable activities: Activities that are inherently unsustainable, such as the release of heavy metals, radioactive materials and persistent synthetic compounds (e.g. chlordane, PCBs, CFCs, PVCs, dioxins, etc.) do not enter directly into footprint calculations. Where these substances cause a loss of biocapacity, however, their influence can be seen.
- Ecological degradation: The footprint does not directly measure ecological degradation, such as increased soil salinity from irrigation, which could affect future bioproductivity. However, if degradation leads to reductions in biological productivity, then this loss is captured when measuring biocapacity in the future. Also, only looking at the aggregate number 'under exploitation' in one area (e.g. forests) can hide over exploitation in another area (e.g. fisheries).
- Resilience of ecosystems: Footprint accounts do not identify where and in what way the capacity of ecosystems are vulnerable or resilient. The footprint is merely an outcome measure documenting how much of the biosphere is being used compared with how productive it is.
ANALYSIS OF OPTIONS
Humanity's ecological footprint was chosen as one of the Convention on Biological Diversity indicators.
The ecological footprint of European countries may show both aggregated figures of regional footprints as well as a breakdown by ecosystem type, or by specific material. It can also show the distribution of biocapacity.
Data sources
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Footprint data and results (dataset URL not directly available)
provided by Global Footprint Network
Other info
Typology: Descriptive indicator (Type A - What is happening to the environment and to humans?)
- SEBI 023
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Geographic coverage
Temporal coverage
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ecological-footprint-of-european-countries/ecological-footprint-of-european-countries-2 or scan the QR code.
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