Ecological Footprint 

Humans dominate the earth with power to sustain, add to, or degrade the natural capital that supports all life and human economies. As our footprints grow, we deplete and degrade more of the earth's natural capital that sustains us and our economies. 

Good New: Many people have a better quality of life. As the world' dominant animal, we have an awesome power to degrade or sustain the life-support system for our own and other species. We decide whether forests are preserved or cut down and engineer the flows of rivers. Our activities affect the temperature of the atmosphere and the temperature and the acidity of the ocean. We also contribute to the extinction of species. At the same time, our creativity, economic growth, scientific research, grassroots political pressure by citizens, and regulatory laws have improved the quality of life for many of the earth's people, especially in the United States and in most other more-developed countries. 

We have developed an astounding array of useful materials and products. We have learned how to use wood, fossil fuels, the sun, wind, flowing water, the nuclei of certain atoms, and the earth's heat (geothermal energy) to supply us with enormous amounts of energy. We have created artificial environments in the form of buildings and cities. We have invented computers to extend our brains, robots to do work for us, and electronic networks to enable instantaneous global communication. 

Globally, lifespans are increasing, infant mortality is decreasing, education is on the rise, some diseases are being conquered, and the population growth rate has slowed. While one out of seven people live in extreme poverty, we have witnessed the greatest reduction in poverty in human history. The food supply is generally more abundant and safer, air and water are getting cleaner in many parts of the world, and exposure to toxic chemicals is more avoidable. We have protected some endangered species and ecosystems are growing back in some areas that we cleared. 

Scientific research and technological advances financed by affluence helped achieve these improvements in life and environmental quality. Education also spurred many citizens who insist that businesses and governments work toward improving enviironmental quality. We are a globally connected species with growing access to information and technologies that could help us to shift to a more sustainable path. 

Research reveals that human activities directly affect about 83% of the earth's land surface (excluding Antarctica). This land is used for things such as growing crops, grazing livestock, harvesting timber, mining, burying wastes, towns and cities (urban land), and recreation such as hiking and skiing. 

In parts of the world, we are destroying forests and grasslands, withdrawing water from some rivers and underground aquifers faster than nature replenishes them, and harvesting many fish species faster than they can be renewed. We also litter the land and oceans with wastes renewed. We also litter the land and oceans with wastes faster than they can be recycled by the earth's natural chemical cycles. In addition, we add pollutants to the air (including some that are altering the earth's climate), soil, underground aquifers, rivers, lakes, and oceans. 

In many parts of the world, renewable forests are shrinking, deserts are expanding, and topsoil is eroding. The lower atmosphere is warming, floating ice and many glaciers are melting at unexpected rates, sea levels are rising, and ocean acidity is increasing. There are more intense floods, droughts, severe weather, and forest fires. In many areas, in a number of regions, rivers are running dry, harvests of many species of fish are dropping sharply, and 20% of the world's species-rich coral reefs are gone and others are threatened. Species are becoming extinct at least 100 times faster than in prehuman times. In addition, extinction rates are projected to increase at least another 100-fold during this century, creating a sixth mass extinction caused by human activities. 

Humans use, and in some cases, degrade about 83% of the earth's land. Much of this land use benefits humans. however, land use by humans can also have harmful environmental effects. Examples are forest loss, overgrazing of grassland, soil erosion, runoff of fertilizers and pesticides from cropland, oil spills from oil wells, large pits created by mining, removal of mountaintops to extract coal, and loss of wildlife habitat. Indeed, the biggest threat to the earth's biodiversity of species is loss and fragmentation of land habitats. 

Lands are often classified according to their use as private and public. Private lands are owned by individuals or business. Owners use them for purposes such growing crops, grazing livestock, harvesting timber, mining, housing, and other buildings. 

Public lands are typically owned jointly by the citizens of a country but are managed by the government. In the United States, the federal government owns and manages about 28% of the country's land. This includes 47% of the land in the western United States and 61% of the land in Alaska. 

Federal public lands in the United States include the: 

• National Park System managed by the National Park Service (NPS)

• Nation Forest System managed by the US Forest Service (USFS)

• Land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

• National Wildlife Refuges managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service 

• National Wilderness Preservation System consisting of designated areas in the above systems and managed by the government agencies in charge of those systems. These protected lands are open only for recreational activities such as hiking, fishing, camping, sport fishing, and nonmotorized boating. 

The use and harmful enviornmental effects of private and public land is discussed later. In other words, land use is a major theme that runs throughout this year's topics. 

Using renewable resources benefits us but can result in natural capital degradation, pollution, and wastes. This harmful environmental impact is called an ecological footprint-the amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population in an area with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution such resource use produces. 

This measure of sustainability evaluates the ability or biocapacity of the earth's productive ecosystems to regenerate the renewable resources used by a population, city, region, country, or the world in a given year. The per capita ecological footprint is the average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area. 

The World Wide Fund of Nature (WWF) and the Global Footprint Network estimate that we would need 1.5 planet earths to sustain the world's 2012 rate of renewable resource use far into the future. in other words, the world's total ecological footprint in 2012 was 50% higher than the planet's estimated long-term biocapacity and has increased since 2012. This overdraft of the earth's natural resources and ecosystem services is being passed on to future generations. 

In the early 1970s, scientists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren developed a simple enviornmental impact mode. This IPAT model shows that the environmental impact (1) of human activities is the product three factors: population size (P), affluence (A) or resource consumption per person, and the beneficial harmful environmental effects of technologies (T). The following equation summarizes this IPAT model: Impact=Population x Affluence x Technology. 

While the ecological footprint mode emphasizes the use of renewable resources, the IPAT model includes the environmental impact of using both renewable and nonrenewable resources. 

The T factor can be harmful or beneficial. Some forms of technology such as polluting factories, gas-guzzling motor vehicles, and coal-burning power plants increase our harmful enviornemtnal impact by raising the T factor. For example, new fishing technology for harvesting large quantities of fish led to the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery. An example of the tragedy of the commons in action. 

Other technologies reduce our harmful environemental impact by decreasing the T factor. Examples, are pollution control and prevention technologies, fuel-efficient cars, and wind turbines and solar cells that generate electricity with a low environmental impact. 

In a less-developed country such as India, population size is a more important factor than resource use per person in determining the country's environmental impact. In a highly developed country such as the United States with a much smaller population, resource use per person and the ability to develop environmentally beneficial technologies play key roles in the country's environmental impact. 

Until about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago we were mostly hunter-gatherers who obtained food by hunting wild animals or scavenging their remains, and gathering wild plants. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in small groups, consumed few resources, had few possessions, and moved as needed to find enough food to survive. 

Since then, three major cultural changes have occurred. First was the agricultural revolution, which began around 10,000 years ago when humans learned how to grow and breed plants and animals for food, clothing, and other purposes and began living in villages instead of frequently moving to find food. They had a more reliable source of food, lived longer, and produced more children who survived to adulthood. 

Second was the industrial-medical revolution, beginning about 300 years ago when people invented machines for the large-scale production of goods in factories. Many people moved from rural villages to cities to work in the factories. This shift involved learning how to get energy from fossil fuels (such as coal and oil) and how to grow large quantities of food in an efficient manner. It also included medical advances that allowed a growing number of people to have longer and healthier lives. Third, about 50 years ago the information-globalization revolution began when we developed new technologies for gaining rapid access to all kinds of information and resources on a global scale. 

Each of these three cultural changes gave us more energy and new technologies with which to alter and control more of the planet's resources to meet our basic needs and increasing wants. They also allowed expansion of the human population, mostly because of larger food supplies and longer lifespans. In addition, these cultural changes resulted in greater resource use, pollution, and environmental degradation and allowed us to dominate the planet and expand our ecological footprints. 

On the other hand, some technological leaps have enabled us to shrink our ecological footprints by reducing our use of energy and matter resources and our production of wastes and pollution. 

Many environmental scientists and other analysis see such developments as evidence of an emerging fourth major cultural change: a sustainability revolution, in which we could learn to live more sustainably during this century. This involves not degrading or depleting the natural capital that we have degraded. Making this shift involves learning how nature has sustained life for over 3.8 billion years and using these lessons from nature to shrink our ecological footprints and grow our beneficial environmental impacts. 

Directions: In your composition notebook you will have a heading with Journal Entry#2 on the left hand side and Name and Block on the right hand side of your notebook. Then complete the following vocabulary and question(s). 

Vocabulary: environmental degradation/natural capital degradation; ecological footprint; biocapacity; sustainability revolution

Questions: 

1. Sustainability can be exercised in the harvesting of many different natural resources. Describe how commercial fishing might harvest fish sustainability. 

2. The ecological footprints for some countries exceed their biocapacity while other countries have ecological reserves. Discuss why the United States is an ecological debtor country.