A Review of the Ecological Footprint Indicator—Perceptions and Methods

By T. Wiedmann, J. Barrett. 2010

308 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a comprehensive review of perceptions and methods around the Ecological Footprint (EF), based on a survey of more than 50 international EF stakeholders and a review of more than 150 original papers on EF methods and applications over the last decade. The key points identified in the survey are that the EF (a) is seen as a strong communication tool, (b) has a limited role within a policy context, (c) is limited in scope, (d) should be closer aligned to the UN System of Environmental and Economic Accounting and (e) is most useful as part of a basket of indicators. Key issues from the review of methods are: (a) none of the major methods identified can address all relevant issues and questions at once, (b) basing bioproductivity calculations on Net Primary Production (NPP) is a promising approach, (c) advances in linking bioproductivity with ecosystem services and biodiversity have been made by the Dynamic EF concept and the HANPP indicator, (d) environmentally extended input-output analysis (IOA) provides a number of advantages for improving EF calculations and (e) further variations such as the emergy-based concept or the inclusion of further pollutants are not regarded as providing a fundamental shift to the usefulness of EF for policy making. We also discuss the implications of our findings for the use of the EF as a headline indicator for sustainability decision-making.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1e3e2c5e0feaefc0bd67e02c43e2d9ca09d47260

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Citations in the corpus

Theoretical exploration for the combination of the ecological, energy, carbon, and water footprints: Overview of a footprint family (2014, background): “As noted above, the mainstream researchers of the ecological footprint place particular emphasis on the assessment at the national level, and modifications have been continuously supplemented to the NFA (Borucke et al., 2013; Wiedmann and Barrett, 2010).”
Measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy (2012, background): “A review of the footprint based on a survey of 34 internationally-recognised experts concluded that the indicator is a strong communications tool, but that it has a limited role within a policy context (Wiedmann and Barrett, 2010).”
Renewable, non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth, trade openness and ecological footprint: Evidence from organisation for economic Co-operation and development countries (2020, background): “…is a long-standing 1 debate regarding the choice of EF as an indicator of ecological sustainability (Kissinger and 2 Haim, 2008; Templet, 2000; Wiedmann and Barrett, 2010, and many others), EF reflects the 3 human dependence on the ecological system, and therefore, it can act as a viable…”