The sustainability challenge is to find ways we can all live rewarding lives, within the limits of one planet. How well are we doing? The Ecological Footprint is a tool to measure our environmental impact. It tracks how much individuals, organizations, cities, regions, nations or humanity as a whole consume and compares this amount to the resources nature can provide. More precisely, it shows how much biologically productive land and water area a given population occupies to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste.

Are we getting to big for our house? Eco-footprint helps us to understand that the impact of the human population on the planet is becoming increasingly large, or as the cartoon shows we are getting bigger and the planet is getting smaller! We are getting too big for our own house. Question for students Identify places on a world map where there is minimal evidence of human occupation? These are hard to find – some answers might include parts of Antarctica, the Arctic but even these most inhospitable parts of the globe have some human occupation.

Who is getting what? Global equity Eco-footprint also helps us understand that a small proportion of the population is consuming a large amount of the resources. Approximately 20% of the global population consumes 80% of resources. Australia fits into the high-consuming category. Question for students: Can you identify 5 countries on a world map that each picture is referring to? Top picture: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom. Bottom Picture: Mozambique, India, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Uganda

If everyone lived like us we would need…… If everyone in the world lived the same way we do here in Australia, we would need four planets to provide all the resources and manage all the waste of our population. How do we know this? The eco-footprint helps us to calculate the land required support our lifestyle and compares it to the capacity of the planet.

Our economy like a cow??? Metabolism like a cow A simple metaphor of how we consume and dispose of resources in our economy is a cow. Essentially everything that cow consumes ends up as waste. A cow takes from the land, in the form of eating grass and it returns to the land in the form of waste. There are some value added products, such as milk, or meat, but it eventually ends up as waste for the planet to manage. This is just the same as every product we use or activity we do takes from the planet and returns in some form of waste. There is very little that escapes from planet earth (except a few satellites!)

Bioproductive Segments How much is available for everyone? Bioproductive segments 18% Biologically Productive Land 11% Deserts, Ice Caps and Barren Land 67% Low-Productivity Ocean 4% Biologically Productive Ocean 22% To find out how much land we have, we can add up all the areas of land that provides services that we use, for example growing trees for the timber in our houses, and farm land for our food. While the world has a very large surface area most of it can’t be used. Can you imagine growing potatoes in Antarctica, or plantation forests in the Australian Desert. 67% of the globe’s surface is “low productive ocean” and 11% is deserts, ice caps and barren land. This leaves 22% (4% biologically productive ocean and 18% biologically productive land) to provide land for all of our activities (i.e. our cities, our croplands and farmlands, our areas for recreation etc) as well as nature (i.e. forests and wildlife).

How much is available for each of us? Personal planetoid If you add up all the bio-productive land and sea on the planet and divide it by the number of people on the planet there is about 1.9 hectares available per person per year. So how much do we use? We will find out…. Global average availability of bioproductive Land + Sea = 1.9 global hectares/person

How big is a hectare? A hectare is the same size as a soccer field. One hectare A hectare is the same size as a soccer field. So there is about two soccer fields available per person on the planet.

? What about land for other species? People vs. nature ? Some people might remember that there are other species on the planet that also need land to survive. How much should we set aside for them? Questions for students: What species are threatened due to reasons such as lack of habitat? What causes habitat destruction? Are there examples where we put some land aside for conservation purposes? How much land should we protect for other species? Why?

What type of land do we use? Footprint components Everyday activities require different types of land to produce the resources and manage the waste. Our eco-footprint is split into five categories of land; land for our cities, houses and roads, land to absorb the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel energy energy use, land to grow crops and pasture on, land to grow trees for timber and land to manage the waste we produce. Eco-footprint calculates how much of these categories are used by our everyday activities. It gives results in areas of land (hectares or acres) so that all impacts can be viewed on a uniform scale. Question for students: Pick an item you use every day. Can you think of all the energy land, crop land and waste absorbtion that would be needed to produce a school shirt throughout the life cycle. Crop land: to grow cotton for the shirt, a small amount to feed the workers on the cotton fields, in the factory and in the retail outlets. Energy land: energy to pump the water for irrigation, transport the cotton to the factory, energy for the factory lighting and machines, transportation to the retail outlet, energy for the retail outlet and transport to your house. Waste land: landfills, water waste. Fossil Fuel Built-up Waste Food Fibres absorption

How much do we use compared to what we have? This graph plots the supply of resources (green line) against the demand for resources (red line), in a unit we are all very familiar with – number of earths. Not surprisingly the supply of resources has not changed over time – We all know that (for the moment) there is only one habitable planet. On the demand side, we are using more and more resources every year – and this graph shows that we are using more than one planet. Global demand currently exceeds supply by at least 20%. How is that possible? We are using resources faster than the planet can regenerate these resources. This is affecting the ability of the planet to supply resources into the future. In the short term we can continue to do this but in the longer term our present lifestyles are not sustainable.

Go to Ms. McDonald’s website: How Much Do You Use? Go to Ms. McDonald’s website: Social Studies, Earth Week Do the Ecological Footprints activities Do the “Find Out About Produce” activity Record your results