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Ecological Footprint and Sustainable Development: A Two Way Approach
Abstract
The concept of ecological footprint was first brought by Rees (1992) by using “human carrying capacity” and “natural capital” to understand the ecological perspectives in the global economic change. Later, the methodological and calculation of ecological footprint was developed by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) in their path breaking work “Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.” Broadly ecological footprint represents the land area which is necessary to sustain the existing levels of resource consumption as well as waste discharge by that given population (Wackernagel and Rees 1997). It is also related to carrying capacity, which means the population can be supported indefinitely in a given habitat without permanently damaging the ecosystem (Wackernagel and Rees 1996; Bicknell et al. 1998).
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An increasing number of studies reveal that tourism industry makes a substantial contribution towards socioeconomic growth and development of tourism led economies. However, tourism steered economic growth and development is achieved at the cost of environmental pollution and degradation. The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of tourists’ arrivals on environmental pollution caused by Carbon Dioxide emissions in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore over the period of 1990–2014. Some other regressors namely energy consumption and income are also used in the multivariate model. The Zivot–Andrews test is employed to determine unit-root and presence of structural break in the data. Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares estimator is used as an analytical technique for unknown parameters estimation. The empirical results reveal that tourism has a significant positive effect on environmental pollution in Malaysia. However, an inverse relationship between tourism and environmental pollution is observed in Thailand and Singapore. Empirical findings suggest that sustainable economic growth and development should be ensured by implementing prudent public policy where host governments must strive to promote socially and environmentally responsible tourism industries in their respective countries. ... Keywords: Tourism; environmental pollution/ CO2 emissions, ASEAN
... (Citation :
Azam, M., Alam, M.M., & Hafeez, M.H. (2018). Effect of Tourism on Environmental Pollution: Further Evidence from Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, Journal of Cleaner Production, 190, 330-338).
Securing food for growing populations while minimizing environmental externalities is becoming a key topic in
the current sustainability debate. This is particularly true in the Mediterranean region, which is characterized by
scarce natural resources and increasing climate-related impacts.
This paper focuses on the pressure Mediterranean people place on the Earth ecosystems because of their food
consumption and sourcing patterns and then explores ways in which such pressure can be reduced. To do so,
it uses an Ecological-Footprint-Extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EF-MRIO) approach applied to 15 Mediterranean countries. Results indicate that food consumption is a substantial driver of the region's ecological deficit, whereby demand for renewable resources and ecosystems services outpaces the capacity of its ecosystems to provide them. Portugal,Malta and Greece are found to have the highest per capita food Footprints (1.50, 1.25 and 1.22 global hectares (gha), respectively), while Slovenia, Egypt and Israel have the lowest (0.63, 0.64 and 0.79 gha, respectively).With the exception of France, all Mediterranean countries rely on the biocapacity of foreign countries to satisfy their residents' demand for food.
By analyzing the effect of shifting to a calorie-adequate diet or changing dietary patterns,we finally point out that the region's Ecological Footprint – and therefore its ecological deficit – could be reduced by 8% to 10%.
This study examines the impacts of income, energy consumption and population growth on CO2 emissions by employing an annual time series data for the period 1970-2012 for India, Indonesia, China, and Brazil. The study used the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test approach considering both the linear and non-linear assumptions for related time series data for the top CO2 emitter emerging countries in both the short run and long run. The results show that CO2 emissions have increased statistically significantly with increases in income and energy consumption in all four countries. While the relationship between CO2 emissions and population growth was found to be statistically significant for India and Brazil, it has been statistically insignificant for China and Indonesia in both the short run and long run. Also, empirical observations from the testing of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis imply that in the cases of Brazil, China and Indonesia, CO2 emissions will decrease over the time when income increases. So based on the EKC findings, it can be argued that these three countries should not take any actions or policies, which might have conservative impacts on income, in order to reduce their CO2 emissions. But in the case of India, where CO2 emissions and income were found to have a positive relationship, an increase in income over the time will not reduce CO2 emissions in the country. ... Keywords: economic growth; CO2 emissions; population growth; energy consumption; Environmental Kuznets Curve, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia.
... (Reference:
Alam, M.M., Murad, M.W., Noman, A.H.M., and Ozturk, I. 2016. Relationships among Carbon Emissions, Economic Growth, Energy Consumption and Population Growth: Testing Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis for Brazil, China, India and Indonesia. Ecological Indicators, Vol. 70, pp. 477-479).
In this perspective paper a critical discussion about the concept of the Ecological Footprint is documented based on 10 questions which are answered from critical and supporting points-of-view. These key questions are directed toward the underlying research objectives of the approach, a comparison with similar concepts, the quantification methodology and its accuracy, the characteristics of the observed flows, the role of scales and resolutions, the implementation of food security, the utility of the ecological footprint for society, the political relevance of the concept and the differences from other international indicator systems.
The main objective of this study is to examine the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis by utilizing the ecological footprint as an environment indicator and GDP from tourism as the economic indicator. To achieve this goal, an environmental degradation model is established during the period of 1988-2008 for 144 countries. The results from the time series generalized method of moments (GMM) and the system panel GMM revealed that the number of countries that have a negative relationship between the ecological footprint and its determinants (GDP growth from tourism, energy consumption, trade openness, and urbanization) is more existent in the upper middle- and high-income countries. Moreover, the EKC hypothesis is more present in the upper middle- and high-income countries than the other income countries. From the outcome of this research, a number of policy recommendations were provided for the investigated countries.
Ecological Footprint and biocapacity metrics have been widely used in natural capital and ecosystem accounting, and are frequently cited in the sustainability debate. Given their potential role as metrics for environmental science and policy, a critical scrutiny is needed.
Moreover, these metrics remain unclear to many, are subject to criticisms, and discussion continues regarding their policy relevance. This paper aims to explain the rationale behind Ecological Footprint Accounting (EFA) and help ensure that Ecological Footprint and biocapacity results are properly interpreted and effectively used in evaluating risks and developing policy recommendations. The conclusion of this paper is that the main value-added of Ecological Footprint Accounting is highlighting trade-offs between human activities by providing both a final aggregate indicator and an accounting framework that
shed light on the relationships between many of the anthropogenic drivers that contribute to ecological overshoot.
As resources become scarcer measuring resource productivity (RP) is more important. Quantifying the value of natural resources is challenging but the ecological footprint (EF) concept provides one method of uniformly describing a variety of natural resources. Current assessments of RP mainly revolve around output efficiency of resources, namely the ratio of GDP to natural resource usage.This paper develops a new method of calculating the RP by using the EF as an indicator of the natural resource input and gross domestic product (GDP) as the output in the equation of RP = GDP/EF. A regression analysis is carried out using GDP per capita and RP of China from 1997 to 2011, and a comparative analysis with the members of the G20 countries according to their RP and per capita GDP in 2008. The results indicate that RP correlates with the per capita GDP, showing that RP is a valid indicator which can be used to measure a country’s level of economic development.
This paper uses the concepts of human carrying capacity and natural capital to argue that prevailing economic assumptions regarding urbanization and the sustainability of cities must be revised in light of global ecological change. While we are used to thinking of cities as geographically discrete places, most of the land "occupied' by their residents lies far beyond their borders. In effect, through trade and natural flows of ecological goods and services, all urban regions appropriate the carrying capacity of distant "elsewhere', creating dependencies that may not be ecologically or geopolitically stable or secure. The global competition for remaining stocks of natural capital and their productive capacity therefore explains much of the environment-development related tension between North and South. Such macro-ecological realities are often invisible to conventional economic analyses yet have serious implications for world development and sustainability in an era of rapid urbanization and increasing ecological uncertainty. -from Author
Population explosion of the last century necessitated adoption of a population stabilization policy internationally but without due consideration of its paradoxical impacts on future world economic and environmental sustainability and progress of civilization. Population stabilization policy makes world fertility level (projected) to fall below the replacement level by 2043. This will result in a declining work-age population endangering economic and environmental sustainability particularly during 2050 and beyond. This study has made an attempt to highlight this paradox of population stabilization policy in terms of its impacts on economic and environmental sustainability. It analyses the catch of the need for a declining population in order to maintain a stable population. It also analyses the time taking process of changing fertility habit of the human community under the concepts of 'child bearing habitual gap' and 'work-age formation gap'. It argues that for a progressive and sustainable world economy a greater and rising work-age population is required and observes that world needs to maintain population growth at a rate balanced in terms of countries and earth's absorption capacity.
... Keywords: Population growth, paradox, fertility rate, work-age population, dependency ratio, migration, environmental sustainability, environmental competency, economic sustainability, technological advancement, zero-sum game, ‘child bearing habitual gap’, ‘work-age formation gap’. ...(Reference:
Alam, M.M., Molla, R.I., Rahman, K.M., and Murad, M.W. 2009. A Paradox of the World Population Stabilization Policy, Journal of Developing Areas, Vol. 43(1), pp. 331-340).
Carrying capacity was evaluated using emergy assessment to improve the diagnosis of problems and to make understanding sustainability easier, thereby supporting the formulation of public policies. Ibiúna County has an area of 105,800 hectare (ha) and it is located 72 km west of São Paulo, the largest Brazilian city. It has 72,029 inhabitants or 0.68 people per ha, but 2.16 people per ha of forest area. The city is only 157 years old and about 67% of its population lives in the rural area and the other 33% in the urban space. In our assessment, the percent renewability of this municipality was high (47.20%). To determine the renewable support area, the carrying capacity methodology suggested by Brown and Ulgiati (2001) was applied and the support area calculated was 306,679 ha or 0.23 people per ha. This result reveals a value for the equivalent natural area needed to absorb the impacts of the fossil fuel consumed in the production of industrial inputs used in the region. A recently proposed ecological footprint methodology was used, where the calculus of support area is based on the consumption profile of the population. This methodology was adapted to obtain an alternate carrying capacity for the county. The result was 249,650 ha or 0.29 individuals per ha. This study showed the importance of preserving natural areas and it introduced the need for changes in the configuration of the county economy and in its population's lifestyle, which are needed to turn Ibiúna County into a truly sustainable region.
Ecological Footprint accounting is used to track human demand on the Earth's biological resource flows, and compares that demand with the Earth's capacity to generate these flows. It is an evolving tool which has undergone many improvements alongside advancements in science and in response to critical review. Here we respond to van den Bergh and Grazi's recent points of criticism toward Ecological Footprint accounting. While the authors suggest that new criticism is accumulating, the main issues appear to be the same. We suggest that the majority of the criticism is derived from the misconception that the Ecological Footprint measures land “use,” which cannot exceed land availability. In response to these criticisms, we aim here to summarize and further clarify the major points of debate and confusion and allow readers to determine the relevance of these issues. We conclude that much of the prior discussion and many of the points repeated here reflect a divergence in general philosophical or semantic perspectives.
Over the past two decades, a continuously expanding list of footprint-style indicators has been introduced to the scientific community with the aim of raising public awareness of how humanity exerts pressures on the environment. A deeper understanding of the connections and interactions between different footprints is required in an attempt to support policy makers in the measurement and choice of environmental impact mitigation strategies. Combining a selection of footprints that address different aspects of environmental issues into an integrated system is, therefore, a natural step. This paper starts with the idea of developing a footprint family from which most important footprints can be compared and integrated. On the basis of literature review in related fields, the ecological, energy, carbon, and water footprints are employed as selected indicators to define a footprint family. A brief survey is presented to provide background information on each of the footprints with an emphasis on their main characteristics in a comparative sense; that is, the footprints differ in many aspects more than just the impacts they are addressed. This allows the four footprints to be complementarily used in assessing environmental impacts associated with natural resource use and waste discharge. We evaluate the performance of the footprint family in terms of data availability, coverage complementarity, methodological consistency, and policy relevance and propose solutions and suggestions for further improvement. The key conclusions are that the footprint family, which captures a broad spectrum of sustainability issues, is able to offer a more complete picture of environmental complexity for policy makers and, in particular, in national-level studies. The research provides new insights into the distinction between environmental impact assessment and sustainability evaluation, properly serving as a reference for multidisciplinary efforts in estimating planetary boundaries for global sustainability.
The construction industry is well known for its high impact on the environment; an even higher impact has taken place in recent years due to the real-estate bubble which has resulted in a surplus in the construction of dwellings in many countries. In Spain, about 500,000 dwellings were constructed during 2006–2010, which represent a 2% increase in four years. In the present work, a methodology is defined as the first step towards the creation of an effective assessment of the Ecological Footprint of this type of construction. The procedure is based on the project budget and its bill of quantities, organized by means of a systematic construction-work breakdown structure which divides the work into three major categories: materials, manpower, and machinery. Each stream generates partial footprints (i.e. energy, food, mobility, construction materials, and waste).
The ecological footprint (EF) is an indicator of human requirements on bio-productive land, an essential but limited resource, which use is related to environmental burden. In this article, we compare three methods for calculating national EF: a) the process analysis represented by Global Footprint Network (GFN) accounts; b) a standard environmentally extended multi-regional input–output model (EE-MRIOM); and c) a hybrid EE-MRIOM. The process analysis accounts for total domestic production and international trade of selected products. A standard EE-MRIOM further accounts for the upstream footprint of all traded products, but has a low resolution of relevant products in available datasets. The hybrid EE-MRIO method assessed here traces the primary biomass products in physical units through environmental extensions. Our results show that the standard MRIO model might introduce a significant error due to low resolution and poor data quality. The hybrid MRIO approach provides more accurate results than the standard MRIO method since it applies data from additional sources on a more detailed level. The process analysis underestimates the footprint of imports and exports as it ignores trade in services and other products as well as the upstream flows of products included in the analysis.
This study investigated the major factors that influence the CO2 emission in 12 Middle Eastern countries, namely, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, and Yemen. A panel model was used in this study and the period 1990–2009 was considered. The results showed that the total primary energy consumption, foreign direct investment net inflows, GDP, and total trade were important factors in increasing CO2 emission in the investigated countries. Thus, it is important for these counties to examine the requirements for foreign investment to promote environmental protection and increase the technological transfer through foreign companies to reduce the environmental damage. It is also important for them to adopt trade-related measures and policies to increase environmental protection since total trade increases CO2 emission. It is also crucial for these countries to increase energy productivity to achieve their GDP growth.
This study investigated the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using a multivariate framework. To achieve the goal of this study, the non-stationary panel techniques were used to examine the hypothesis from 1980 to 2009. Based on the Pedroni cointegration test results, it was found that the variables are cointegrated. Moreover, the Fully Modified OLS results showed that energy consumption and GDP growth increase CO2 emission while foreign direct investment inflows have a long run negative relationship with CO2 emission. Furthermore, based on the short run Granger causality test results, FDI has no short run causal relationship with CO2 emission and energy consumption while energy consumption and GDP growth have a positive causal relationship with CO2 emission. Thus, the results of this study indicate that energy consumption and GDP growth are the source of pollution in the GCC countries and not the foreign direct investment inflows. Thus, the study recommended that these countries should utilize policies to encourage inward foreign investment since it plays an important role in stimulating GDP growth.
In recent years, attempts have been made to develop an integrated Footprint approach for the assessment of the environmental impacts of production and consumption. In this paper, we provide for the first time a definition of the “Footprint Family” as a suite of indicators to track human pressure on the planet and under different angles. This work has been developed under the 7th Framework Programme in the European Commission (EC) funded One Planet Economy Network: Europe (OPEN:EU) project. It builds on the premise that no single indicator per se is able to comprehensively monitor human impact on the environment, but indicators rather need to be used and interpreted jointly. A description of the research question, rationale and methodology of the Ecological, Carbon and Water Footprint is first provided. Similarities and differences among the three indicators are then highlighted to show how these indicators overlap, interact, and complement each other. The paper concludes by defining the “Footprint Family” of indicators and outlining its appropriate policy use for the European Union (EU). We believe this paper can be of high interest for both policy makers and researchers in the field of ecological indicators, as it brings clarity on most of the misconceptions and misunderstanding around Footprint indicators, their accounting frameworks, messages, and range of application.
1. Background Ecological Economics publishes fora in order to stimulate substantive discussion of topical issues as an alternative to confrontational debate. Com-mentaries included in each forum are invited, with an eye toward presenting a balanced and interest-ing discussion of the issue at hand. In inviting and reviewing the commentaries, we are therefore not seeking merely critiques or support of particular works (although this can certainly be included), but rather thoughtful discussion and interpreta-tion of the issues they raise, and creative exten-sions into new areas. The issues of 'indicators' and 'biophysical lim-its' in their various guises have been central ones for Ecological Economics since its inception. There has been much recent interest in and discussion of one particular indicator, known as the 'Ecological Footprint' (EF), including a book (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996) and two recent articles in Ecolog-ical Economics (van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999; Wackernagel et al., 1999). The EF for a particular population is defined as the total ''area of productive land and water ecosystems required to produce the resources that the population consumes and assimilate the wastes that the population produces, wherever on Earth that land and water may be located'' (Rees, 2000). The EF has been widely praised as an effective heuristic and pedagogic device for pre-senting current total human resource use in a way that communicates easily to almost everyone. Al-though there are ongoing debates about specific methods for calculating the EF (cf. Herendeen, 2000; Simmons and Lewis, 2000), everyone, it seems, understands land area as a numeraire — even those who have trouble with money or en-ergy as a numeraire. The controversy comes when one moves from simply stating the results of an EF calculation to interpreting it as an indicator of something else. The EF has been proposed as an indicator of biophysical limits and sustainability, i.e. if one's EF is bigger than the land area under one's direct control then 'overshoot' has occurred and one has exceeded one's sustainable resource use. In other words, can the EF be used as a ''guideline to achieving sustainability'' as the Dutch environ-ment minister inquired of Hans Opschoor (Op-schoor, 2000) or is it merely an interesting attention getting device? * Tel.
Sustainable development is a contested concept, with theories shaped by people's and organizations' different worldviews, which in turn influence how issues are formulated and actions proposed. It is usually presented as the intersection between environment, society and economy, which are conceived of as separate although connected entities. We would argue that these are not unified entities: rather they are fractured and multi-layered and can be considered at different spatial levels. The economy is often given priority in policies and the environment is viewed as apart from humans. They are interconnected, with the economy dependent on society and the environment while human existence and society are dependent on, and within the environment. The separation of environment, society and economy often leads to a narrow techno-scientific approach, while issues to do with society that are most likely to challenge the present socio-economic structure are often marginalized, in particular the sustainability of communities and the maintenance of cultural diversity. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment
This paper presents methodological advances for calculating Ecological Footprints in time series, and applies them to Austria, the Philippines, and South Korea for the time period from 1961 to 1999. Two different methodological approaches are taken: (1) The latest evolution of the conventional Ecological Footprint method expressed in ‘global hectares’, or normalized hectares with global average bioproductivity; (2) an ‘actual land-use’ approach that calculates the physical area occupied for each country's socio-economic metabolism. The national assessments presented in this paper apply dynamic equivalence and yield factors, which are recalculated for each year. The paper also proposes new methods to deal with grassland yields and discusses problems in defining bioproductive area. The results, reflecting consumption figures, show that the rapid industrialization in South Korea resulted in a steep increase in its Ecological Footprint, whereas Austria's Footprint, which was already large in 1961, grew only slowly throughout the analyzed period. The paper also presents a sectoral Ecological Footprint analysis that compares human demand on forests in the Philippines to its export of forest products. Following a discussion of these challenges, this paper proceeds to showcase time series for Austria, the Philippines, and South Korea both to compare the Footprint analysis results to those of previous methods and to illustrate its analytical capacity.
This study addresses the conceptual challenges that emerge when calculating Ecological Footprint time series. Building on core concerns arising from the various existing Footprint time series at the national and global scale, this paper discusses conceptual and methodological implications, and suggests improvements for enhancing the clarity, validity and reliability of Ecological Footprint results. Unlike static accounts, time series show trends that allow researchers to test the noise in the data. Also, time series offer the opportunity to examine results and question interpretations, a fertile ground for comparing methodological alternatives. This paper addresses two conceptual issues that determine method design: the specific meaning and measurement challenges of ecological overshoot; and the range of research questions that can be addressed with productivity-adjusted hectares versus actual hectares. The conclusions from this discussion build the groundwork for showcasing time series for three countries.
The ecological footprint is a measure of the resources necessary to produce the goods that an individual or population consumes. It is also used as a measure of sustainability, though evidence suggests that it falls short. The assumptions behind footprint calculations have been extensively criticized; I present here further evidence that it fails to satisfy simple economic principles because the basic assumptions are contradicted by both theory and historical data. Specifically, I argue that the footprint arbitrarily assumes both zero greenhouse gas emissions, which may not be ex ante optimal, and national boundaries, which makes extrapolating from the average ecological footprint problematic. The footprint also cannot take into account intensive production, and so comparisons to biocapacity are erroneous. Using only the assumptions of the footprint then, one could argue that the Earth can sustain greatly increased production, though there are important limitations that the footprint cannot address, such as land degradation. Finally, the lack of correlation between land degradation and the ecological footprint obscures the effects of a larger sustainability problem. Better measures of sustainability would address these issues directly.
Sustainable development has become a primary objective for many countries throughout the world since the late 1980s. A major difficulty associated with sustainable development objectives, however, is the absence of reliable indicators to measure progress towards the goal of sustainability. The ‘ecological footprint’ provides an estimate of the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption for a given population. On an aggregate basis, the ecological footprint may be compared with the amount of ecologically productive land available to give an indication of whether consumption patterns are likely to be sustainable. This paper proposes the use of a modified form of input–output analysis to calculate the ecological footprint. The input–output approach provides a consistent means of calculating an ecological footprint using data collected as part of the system of national accounts in most developed countries. In addition, it makes explicit the link between the level of economic activity in a country and its corresponding impact on the environment. An application of this methodology to New Zealand indicates that it takes 3.49 has of ecologically productive land per year to sustain the average New Zealander’s current level of consumption.
The protection of natural capital, including its ability to renew or regenerate itself, represents a core aspect of sustainability. Hence, reliable measures of the supply of, and human demand on, natural capital are indispensable for tracking progress, setting targets and driving policies for sustainability. This paper presents the latest iteration of such a measure: the Ecological Footprint. After explaining the assumptions and choice of data sources on which the accounts are built, this paper presents how the newest version of these accounts has become more consistent, reliable and detailed by using more comprehensive data sources, calculating and comparing yields more consistently, distinguishing more sharply between primary and secondary production, and using procedures to identify and eliminate potential errors. As a result, this method can now provide more meaningful comparisons among nations’ final consumption, or their economic production, and help to analyze the Ecological Footprint embodied in trade. With the higher level of detail, the accounts can generate sectoral assessments of an economy or, as shown in a complementary paper in this series, time trends of all these aspects.
Sustainable development represents a commitment to advancing human well-being, with the added constraint that this development needs to take place within the ecological limits of the biosphere. Progress in both these dimensions of sustainable development can be assessed: we use the UN Human Development Index (HDI) as an indicator of development and the Ecological Footprint as an indicator of human demand on the biosphere. We argue that an HDI of no less than 0.8 and a per capita Ecological Footprint less than the globally available biocapacity per person represent minimum requirements for sustainable development that is globally replicable. Despite growing global adoption of sustainable development as an explicit policy goal, we find that in the year 2003 only one of the 93 countries surveyed met both of these minimum requirements. We also find an overall trend in high-income countries over the past twenty five years that improvements to HDI come with disproportionately larger increases in Ecological Footprint, showing a movement away from sustainability. Some lower-income countries, however, have achieved higher levels of development without a corresponding increase in per capita demand on ecosystem resources.
We present a new calculation of Australia's ecological footprint. Modifications have been made to the concept as originally proposed, in response to its perceived shortcomings: rather than characterising the consumption of the Australian population in terms of appropriated ‘bioproduction’ at world-average productivity, a regional, disturbance-based approach is taken, including actual Australian land use and emissions data. We consider greenhouse gases other than CO2 and emission sources other than energy use. We re-classify land use and introduce a weighting system to describe the degree of land disturbance. For our calculations, we employ a single-region, static, partially closed input–output framework. Australia's ecological footprint is determined based on actual land use as well as on land disturbance. We set up National Greenhouse Gas and Ecological Footprint Accounts distinguishing imports, domestic consumption, and exports. We investigate variations of the ecological footprint with demographic factors such as income, expenditure, size, and location of households, and draw some policy implications from our results. When determined based on actual land use on all types of land, Australia's ecological footprint is about 13.6 hectares per capita (ha/cap), which is considerably larger than results obtained in previous studies. After weighting, a land disturbance of 7.2 ha/cap is obtained. The per-capita ecological footprint shows a correlation with household expenditure, which can be described by an elasticity ηE=0.64. Furthermore, the per-capita ecological footprint decreases noticeably with household size.
Cruise tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry and one that has significant environmental, economic and social impacts on target destinations. Yet, tourism decision makers, developers and managers rarely incorporate or estimate environmental impacts in their tourism development planning. Indeed, the analysis of the resulting resource exploitation is rarely undertaken until carrying capacity is breached and attractiveness diminished. In this article an assessment is offered that determines, quantifies and financially estimates emissions and waste streams so they can be compared with the direct income generated to the local economy by cruising tourism. It is applied to the Croatian part of the Adriatic and financially evaluates environmental impacts, arguing that they are negative externalities due to inappropriate internalization and management. The purpose of the assessment is to give a “snapshot” of the situation, and also to create the groundwork for a model that will assist decision makers and stakeholders, at different levels and of different interests, to prevent and reduce the ecological, health and economic risks associated with dead-end tourism development.
There is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital. However, progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow, not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable. Therefore, to overcome this obstacle, assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed. This study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting. It demonstrates, using the example of Italy, an accounting framework which tracks national economies’ energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows. This calculation has been applied to over 52 countries. With this framework, based on the ecological footprint concept, human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level, using existing data.
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2003.10.09