The Ecological Footprint is a vital concept if we really want to know the impact we create on the environment. Not managing its scope would make it almost impossible for us to talk about sustainability, as it would be impossible to know the appropriate limit of an activity or production on the environment without the respective indicators and metrics. In this brief reflection, I try to clarify this issue of ecological footprint and to give an idea of the state of the question, as it is not a peaceful area.
The first thing we need to be clear about is that the idea of sustainability (whether for a country, for a region or for a company) is completely linked to the economic is completely linked to the economic conception that is handled. At In this sense, there is a debate in the field about the "Conventional" Economy and the "Conventional Economy". "Conventional" and "Ecological Economics". In the following, I would like to offer some brief considerations in this respect.
- Conventional economics:
The so-called "mother equation" of economics, known as the production function, is often simplified in its components. Thus, factors that belong to the environment and without which any kind of production would be unthinkable are often left out. The root of this comes from the presentation of the Cobb-Douglas function, which owes its existence to the American economist Paul Douglas, who in 1927 observed that in the USA the distribution of income between labour and capital had remained constant over time (70-30 respectively). Upon noticing this, he turned to the mathematician Charles Cobb, as a result of which the model emerged (Sancho, 2015).
In this case, Y is output, while A is total factor productivity. total factor productivity. This includes aspects of a country that improve (or worsen) the outcome of the the outcome of the interaction between capital (K) and labour (L), such as technology, institutions, inequality and globalisation. In turn, "a" represents the income distribution observed by Douglas, between capital and labour.
As can be seen, in the basic economic equation, two seriously important aspects are left out. two seriously important aspects are left out of the basic economic equation. The first one, as already announced above, is that it takes more than A (technological progress) to produce is that production requires more than A (technological advances and institutions), K (capital) and L (labour force). and institutions), K (capital) and L (labour force). Namely: air, water, land and many other natural resources, as the case may be, are often taken for granted. taken for granted. Their gratuitousness in many cases, as well as the limited (non-existent?) environmental awareness of the time has contributed to this.
The second core aspect that the Cobb-Douglas equation ignores is the factor interaction part of the output. That is, what the equation suggests is that the only resulting outputs are goods, services and wealth in general. What stands out here is the fact that the issue of waste is left out. This error is so serious that it ignores the pollutants that are released into the environment by all economic activities, which should be the primary concern of sustainable development. Thus, economic activities as important as industry are seen in classical economics as mere creators of wealth, ignoring the dangerous and polluting waste that often results from their activity.
2. The Green Economy:
In contrast to the previous position, this new vision of the field emerges, involving ecology, understood as: "the study of the relationships between plants and animals with their organic and inorganic environments, and economics, as the study of how between plants and animals with their organic and inorganic environments, and economics,as the study of how humans subsist, how they satisfy their needs and wants" (Common & Stagl, 2008). satisfy their needs and wants" (Common & Stagl, 2008). At first In the first instance, it might be thought that the two branches are separated by an unbridgeable chasm and that gulf and that their relationship is non-existent. However, more recent more recent approaches see the relationship as completely and utterly inescapable. inescapable.
As can be seen, the green economy is based on an integrative approach and rejects an isolated and/or aseptic view of the ecological economy. the isolated and/or aseptic view of conventional economics. conventional economics. Thus, within the first approach, "it is the economic system that constitutes a subsystem within a wider system such as the biosphere, the biosphere and the biosphere itself. constitutes a subsystem within a wider system such as the biosphere, and, therefore, its dynamics are restricted and must be compatible with the laws that govern the functioning of the biosphere. the laws that govern the functioning of the biosphere itself (the laws of thermodynamics and ecology)" (Carmelo Carmelo Carmelo and Ecology)" (Carpenter, Introduction: Ecological Economics as an Open and Transdisciplinary Approach, 2008). open and transdisciplinary approach, 2008). As can be seen, it is a matter of abandoning a monetised view of the economic problem. monetised view of the economic problem, in which not all production problems can be production problems cannot be solved with more investment, capital purchases or increased labour increase in the labour force.
Thus, ecological economics incorporates scientific knowledge from other sciences, as it observes the indivisibility of economic science in relation to the laws governing nature.
3. The Ecological Footprint and sustainability measurement.
Some of the institutions in charge of these issues favour the classical version of economics. Such is the case of the World Bank, which uses the so-called "Genuine Savings Rate" to measure sustainability. It basically consists of adapting the Cobb-Douglas function mentioned above, and offsetting the expenditure of natural resources with investment in its other components. Thus, one can still be sustainable if one cuts down a forest, but invests in education (to give a rather simple example). In a very basic way, this position could be visualised as follows:
The consequence of this way of measuring sustainability is that countries that are really very polluting, but have a lot of economic resources to reinvest in human or physical capital (roads, hospitals and schools, for example) are taken as examples of sustainability. With this index, economies such as China or the United States are considered sustainable, thus achieving greater resource uptake and continuing to consume resources without consequence. On the contrary, countries with few economic resources, but which do not really pollute much (such as the Democratic Republic of Congo) are punished by the indicator's result.
The truth of the matter is that The truth of the matter is that the measurement of sustainability necessarily has to take space into space, as "this kind of approach allowed to bring an appropriate dimension to the analysis of an appropriate dimension to analyses of sustainability as a matter of scale or size occupied by the economic system within the biosphere". of scale or size occupied by the economic system within the biosphere" (Carpintero, 2005). (Carpenter, 2005).
This is how we arrive at the concept of "Ecological Footprint" which has been defined as "an integrating environmental indicator of the impact that a certain human community -country, region or city- exerts on its environment, considering both the resources necessary and the waste generated for the maintenance of production and consumption of the community" (Elorrieta & Tortajada Martinez, 2003).
With regard to the aforementioned territorial implication, this indicator differs (inter alia) from the one used by the World Bank in that it (among other things) differs from the one used by the World Bank in that it takes into account the area as a factor of production. surface area as a factor of production. In this sense, "(t)he ecological footprint is ecological footprint is expressed as the area needed to produce the resources consumed by an average citizen in a given area. resources consumed by an average citizen of a given human community, as well as the area needed to assimilate the waste the area needed to assimilate the waste it generates, regardless of the location of these areas. location of these areas". (Elorrieta & Tortajada Martinez, 2003).
William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel are the authors of this environmental indicator in 1996. environmental indicator in 1996. They defined it as "the area of ecologically productive land (crop, grassland, forest or aquatic ecosystem). ecologically productive land (crop, grassland, forest or aquatic ecosystem) necessary to produce the resources used and to assimilate the waste produced by a defined population with a defined produced by a defined population with a specified standard of living indefinitely, wherever this area is located" (Elorrieta & Tortajada Martinez, 2003). Tortajada Martinez, 2003). A very important issue is that it changes the sustainability from focusing on "how much population can be sustained" to "how much population can be sustained" (Elorrieta & Tortajada Martinez, 2003). analysing "how much population a given region can sustainably support", whereas what is really the real relevance for the measurement of the ecological footprint is: "how much land area can a given region sustainably support? ecological footprint is: "how much productive land area is needed to sustain a given population indefinitely, regardless of sustain a given population indefinitely, wherever that land is located? Rees & Wackernagel in (Carpintero, The Metabilism of the Spanish Economy, 2005). Spanish economy, 2005).
Currently, the Global Footprint Network website analyses different countries using this methodology. The result is much more accurate than that used by the World Bank and leaves several nations, including Costa Rica, in a bad light. Costa Rica has a per capita biocapacity of 1.5 GHA, while its ecological footprint is 2.8 GHA . This means that it has a biocapacity deficit of -1.3GHA. (Global Footprint Network, 2016). The turning point came in the 1990s, when it began to use more resources than its surface area would allow it to obtain in a sustainable way. If it continues on this path, its environmental situation would be extremely compromised and, in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world (approximately 5% of the planet's estimated biodiversity, i.e. a total of 94,753 known species), it could lose all this wealth, compromising the health of its inhabitants and the world in general.
4. By way of conclusion
It is important to be aware of these debates, as they affect everyone on the planet. everyone on the planet. Conventional economics ignores natural resources natural resources, acting as if they are inexhaustible, or as if the waste we produce can be absorbed by the planet without any can be absorbed by the planet without consequence and indefinitely. indefinitely. However, scientific advances show us that the reality is different. reality is different.
Green economics has raised its hand and demonstrated within the scientific community that resources and waste are two the scientific community that resources and waste are two elements that must be taken into account in any economic that must be taken into account in any economic system. Now we understand that the economy operates within the biosphere, and in that sense plays by its rules. with its rules. To ignore these facts is not only wrong, but foolish. Already It is to deny an inescapable reality, with dire consequences for life on the planet as we know it. life on the planet as we know it. The The ecological footprint is the indicator that best fits such parameters of scientific scientific, rigorous and accurate. The premise is as simple as it is true: you cannot eat money . It is therefore extremely important to to know it, to manage it and to demand its use from the competent authorities. On the www.footprintnetwork.org you can and learn more about it, so I extend an invitation to visit this website and learn more about it. invitation to visit this website and learn more about these issues.
