The main body of eco-footprinting research, contained within the Living Planet Report 2002 can be viewed and downloaded via this website, from Table 2 on the Sustainable numbers page, with permission from Jonathan Loh (The LPR report was published initially by WWF International). The additional figures for sustainable populations for each nation have been calculated by Andrew Ferguson of OPT and these appear in the second, extended table (Table 2E) which may also be downloaded from the Sustainable numbers page. OPT offers these figures only as a basis for debate.

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTING EXPLAINED

Much of OPT's research concerns the development of ecological footprinting , a technique that has begun to measure the ecological carrying capacity of Earth. According to two experts whose research OPT uses, Mathis Wackernagel and Jonathon Loh, "It is a non-monetised indicator of human pressure on the biosphere. For any population, its ecological footprint represents the biologically productive area required to produce the crops, meat, fish and wood consumed, to absorb the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuels burnt, and to give room for infrastructure used by that population." OPT Research Co-ordinator Andrew Ferguson defines eco-footprinting as "the process of determining the bioproductive area that a person or a population needs in order to sustain a specified lifestyle."

There are two sides to ecological footprinting - supply and demand (of renewable resources).

• An ecological footprint = demand for (and impacts on) biological product, which is defined as the area (mostly land) needed for that product.
• Biological productivity (bioproductivity) or biocapacity = supply of biological product (biomass).

The results are presented as broad conclusions, but the methodology is quite complex, involving 'equivalence factors' for example, to arrive at the most recent results.

It must be stressed that when used to measure the carrying capacity (sustainable population) of individual countries it is a 'broad brush' treatment, presenting figures that can serve as a basis for debate and policy formulation. It is a snapshot picture which does not take into account realistic expectations of improvements in environmental technology, nor of the potential longer-term capacity of some nations to live by international trade.

Research on sustainable population sizes, by eco-footprinting or other methods, is constantly evolving. For example, the October 2002 edition of the OPT Journal discusses the 'carbon absorption paradigm' - the limits to the amount of carbon sequestration that can be carried out by afforestation.

For more explanation of eco-footprinting see our website page at:   Eco-footprint FAQS

THE LIVING PLANET REPORT 2002

In June 2002, WWF (the World Wide Fund for Nature) published the Living Planet Report 2002 (LPR 2002). This 36 page booklet is available from WWF, Avenue du Mont-Blanc, 1196 Gland, Switzerland, at a cost of 10 Euros or US$9.00. (Tel: +41 22 364 9111). It was produced in conjunction with an eco-footprinting team from Redefining Progress, Oakland, California, led by co-originator of eco-footprinting, Mathis Wackernagel, who now works with the Global Footprint Network, the non-profit organisation he founded in 2004.

If you are not already familiar with ecological footprinting, you are recommended to read the Living Planet Report before studying the tables on this website.

LPR 2002 was a follow up to the earlier LPR 2000 report. In both editions, valuable eco-footprinting data is shown in Table 2. Among other things, that table lists the ecological footprints and biocapacity of 146 nations. The LPR 2002 edition is particularly useful in facilitating OPT carrying capacity calculations, because it contains biocapacity figures separated into their individual components (cropland, pasture, forest and fishing ground).

The report can be downloaded in electronic form from the WWF and from Redefining Progress as a 1.05 Mb file.

Table 2

In the hardcopy edition of the Living Planet Report 2002, the table, Table 2: Ecological Footprints and Biocapacity occupies pages 22-29. Some people will want to make use of the data in the Table 2 spreadsheet, which is why, with the permission of WWF, OPT makes it available on this site for downloading.

Table 2E

OPT uses eco-footprinting data to calculate the possible (population) carrying capacities of different countries. So OPT also offers for downloading its extended version of Table 2, referred to as Table 2E.

Both tables can be downloaded from the Sustainable numbers page of this site. They can be saved to disk and then used with an Excel spreadsheet programme (from version 4.0).

The columns and cells are annotated with explanatory notes. The added cells are mainly 'live'- not just values, so you can inspect the formula used to calculate them. The formulae are often explained in cell notes; these are backed up by a comprehensive explanation of Table 2E. Also available on this site are a more general discussion: Eco-footprint FAQS and an explanation of the Crucial CO2 limit of 9GtC02 a year.

Further to the right on the spreadsheet, the yield factors are shown; these provide background information on biocapacities. Eco-footprinting is normally carried out in terms of global hectares. See Glossary page of this website for an explanation of these terms and of the relationship between local area hectares, worldwide hectares and global hectares.

The written commentary explaining the technical details of OPT's changes to Table 2, making Table 2E, and the more wide-ranging discussion of LPR 2002 are contained in the PDF documents Notes and Index to Tables and Questions and Answers as downloadable from the Numbers by country page. Many of the carrying capacity concepts explained in these documents have been developed over several years, and analysed in OPT papers, but this is the first time that OPT has presented on a website a spreadsheet designed to help investigation and exploration by other users.

An 'ecological footprint' is a measure of man's use of renewable natural resources in relation to 'biocapacity', nature's biologically productive capacity. Work in this area has been pioneered internationally by university scientists and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). A good explanation of the principles is explained in a paper by Mathis Wackernagel, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists. The latest WWF calculations, many of which are used below, are published in its Living Planet Report 2002 : 'A country's footprint is the total area [expressed in 'global hectares'] required to produce the food and fibres that country consumes, sustain its energy consumption, and give space for its infrastructure'. See Eco-footprinting

UK consumption of food, wood and energy, measured by its total ecological footprint of 5.35 global hectares (gh) per person, greatly exceeds its existing biological capacity of 1.64 global hectares per person. Even without its carbon dioxide footprint of 2.99gh per person, its consumption footprint exceeds its biological capacity.

The UK population is precariously dependent on large imports of food, wood and other commodities, and will soon become more dependent on imports of crucial oil and gas supplies. Its dependence on imports will be threatened by competition with increasing demands by the growing populations of the developing industrialising countries, and its ability to pay for imports with exports may be impaired by competition with the cheaper exports of those countries. The UK also makes inequitably large demands on the world's pollution sinks. For example: