The Ecological Footprint as a Tool in Environmental (...)

What is the ecological footprint?

It is a tool for determining if our lifestyles are sustainable. Categories of human consumption are translated into areas of productive land which is required to provide resources and assimilate waste products. The “footprint” is the total amount of land required to sustain one human or group of humans, say in a family or city, based on their use of energy, food, water, transport, building material and other consumables. It is a way of determining relative consumption for the purpose of educating people about their resource use. This approach shows that the most advanced countries consume and have a larger footprint on the earth than the rest of the planet.

By calculating the ‘environmental footprint’ the extent to which a person is utilising more or less than their fair sustainable share of the worlds resources can be shown. To ask people to fill in a form calculating their personal ecological footprint based on their everyday behavior can be considered as a kind of “shock therapy” because to find out that we need three or more planets to maintain a lifestyle like most of the citizens in the industrialized countries have is very impressing and leads many people to reflect more intensively about the necessity of changing their lifestyle and to promote a more sustainable development.

The Basque administration adopted the idea of a public campaign, which Hans Harms presented to them in the context of the presentation of the Charter of Human Responsibility. The result was a campaign in the mass-media and the publication and circulation to all households of a calendar explaining the concept of sustainable development with concrete examples and data and finally asking the citizens to calculate their ecological footprint filling in a questionnaire – and doing it again within year to find out, if they have changed their habits in the meantime.

On the Internet can be found numerous Web sites where you can find this type of questionnaires. One of them is, for example: http://www.earthday.net/footprint/i...

Another one, specially for children is: http://www.globalfootprints.org/iss...


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	Início Atividades Atividades regionais Europe Europa Ocidental Innovative Projects, Experiences, and Ideas Publicado em 7 de setembro de 2005 Traduções disponíveis em: The Ecological Footprint as a Tool in Environmental Education por Hans HARMS Temas largos ligados: Environment .
	What is the ecological footprint? It is a tool for determining if our lifestyles are sustainable. Categories of human consumption are translated into areas of productive land which is required to provide resources and assimilate waste products. The “footprint” is the total amount of land required to sustain one human or group of humans, say in a family or city, based on their use of energy, food, water, transport, building material and other consumables. It is a way of determining relative consumption for the purpose of educating people about their resource use. This approach shows that the most advanced countries consume and have a larger footprint on the earth than the rest of the planet. By calculating the ‘environmental footprint’ the extent to which a person is utilising more or less than their fair sustainable share of the worlds resources can be shown. To ask people to fill in a form calculating their personal ecological footprint based on their everyday behavior can be considered as a kind of “shock therapy” because to find out that we need three or more planets to maintain a lifestyle like most of the citizens in the industrialized countries have is very impressing and leads many people to reflect more intensively about the necessity of changing their lifestyle and to promote a more sustainable development. The Basque administration adopted the idea of a public campaign, which Hans Harms presented to them in the context of the presentation of the Charter of Human Responsibility. The result was a campaign in the mass-media and the publication and circulation to all households of a calendar explaining the concept of sustainable development with concrete examples and data and finally asking the citizens to calculate their ecological footprint filling in a questionnaire – and doing it again within year to find out, if they have changed their habits in the meantime. On the Internet can be found numerous Web sites where you can find this type of questionnaires. One of them is, for example: http://www.earthday.net/footprint/i... Another one, specially for children is: http://www.globalfootprints.org/iss...

The Ecological Footprint as a Tool in Environmental Education