by frog
Sadly the biggest news from WWF’s global footprint report was that a handful of other countries managed to perform even worse than New Zealand. United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Kuwait and Australia were worthy opposition though for the title of least sustainable country with their superior commitment to consumption and oil burning. That Denmark managed to pip us for a top five spot was surprising though – its extensive crops and carbon burning habits beating our unsustainable grazing lands and fisheries.
As NZPA notes:
An ecological footprint measures the amount of resources humans use and the waste they generate: New Zealand has moved from requiring 5.9 “global hectares” per person in the 2006 WWF report to an average of 7.7 global hectares.
A global hectare is a standardised hectare of land able to produce resources and absorb wastes at world average levels.
Worldwide, the average ecological footprint jumped from 2.2 global hectares per person to 2.7 global hectares per person, but the world has only an average 2.1ha available per person.
“Humans are now exceeding the planet’s regenerative capacity by about 30 percent,” the report said.
It’s yet more evidence that the ‘fast followers-world leaders‘ debate that we were having early this year was ridiculous in the extreme. New Zealand needs to act decisively and promptly just so as not to be seen as one of the world’s worst environmental citizens. Many wealthier and more productive countries throughout Europe have significantly smaller footprints than ours and they still have a long way to go to achieve sustainability.
Photo credit: limonada
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Thu, October 30th, 2008
Tags: , bigfoot, ecological footprint, sustainable, WWF
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Only sixth?
Bah, wait until National win the election. Once John Key puts a stop to the fitting of insulation in old and new houses, we can easily push aside those Danish and Australian upstarts.
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As Afghanistan is one of the countries with the best carbon footprint, the solution to New Zealand problems is simple.
Harbour a few terrorist (ah, wait the urewares is full of them – so we are ahead there), have someone blow up a building in the USA and claim responsibility for harbouring the terrorist.
Before you know it the USA will flatten New Zeaalnd in its war on terror and our ecological foot print will be at the top of the list!
Easy.
Does anyone seriously want to live in countries with small ecological foot prints? Bangladesh for example, or Chad, Haiti?
Suppose all the greens will be emigrating shortly?
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One can only hope…
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No the solution is simple given that this is a per capita measure.
Just double the population and our per capita footprint halves and we are winners!
So easy when you know how.
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While this report notes that NZ need 7.7 Global Ha /person to survive, It also notes (and not heavily published) that NZ has 14.1 Global Ha. /person as its total bio-capacity, so we are only using just over half of the capacity of NZ.
According to the report we are in surplus by 6.4 Global Ha/person, Why are we beating ourselves up over this, According to WWF, NZ has ample biocapacity for our consumption, wake me when we get close to 14.
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>>Why are we beating ourselves up over this
The Greens would have nothing to do if we didn’t….
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welly, I think the point was:
“Worldwide, the average ecological footprint jumped from 2.2 global hectares per person to 2.7 global hectares per person, but the world has only an average 2.1ha available per person.
“Humans are now exceeding the planet’s regenerative capacity by about 30 percent,” the report said.”
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and the Greens want immigration?
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Frog’s link to the report requires a bit hunting to find the actual pdf which turns out to be here.
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report_2008.pdf
The graph on page 16 of 48 tells the full story. Australia, New Zealand and Canada are well below the first world average for carbon footprint. It’s only when cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds are added that these three countries making it into the top ten. Unfortunately the ecological foorprint isn’t treated the same way as the water footprint – The total water footprint of a country is
made up of two components. The internal
water footprint is the volume of water
needed to grow and provide the goods and
services which are produced and consumed
inside that country. The external water
footprint results from consumption of
imported goods, or in other words, water that
is used for the production of goods in the
exporting country. A country’s exports are
not included as part of its water footprint.
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