Development of Ecological Footprint to an Essential Economic and Political Tool

Aubauer, H. P.

doi:10.3390/su3040649

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…This calls for the need to take spatial variations in resource scarcity into account [37,38]. In theory, nation-specific environmental boundaries for resource use can be quantified either through the aggregation of local or regional scarcity thresholds, if present, or through the overall estimate of resource availability within the national borders.…”

Section: Quantifying National Water and Land Boundaries On A Resourcementioning

confidence: 99%

The Environmental Sustainability of Nations: Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints against Allocated Planetary Boundaries

et al. 2015

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Growing scientific evidence for the indispensable role of environmental sustainability in sustainable development calls for appropriate frameworks and indicators for environmental sustainability assessment (ESA). In this paper, we operationalize and update the footprint-boundary ESA framework, with a particular focus on its methodological and application extensions to the national level. By using the latest datasets available, the planetary boundaries for carbon emissions, water use and land use are allocated to 28 selected countries in comparison to the corresponding environmental footprints. The environmental sustainability ratio (ESR)-an internationally comparable indicator representing the sustainability gap between contemporary anthropogenic interference and critical capacity thresholds-allows one to map the reserve or transgression of the nation-specific environmental boundaries. While the geographical distribution of the three ESRs varies across nations, in general, the worldwide unsustainability of carbon emissions is largely driven by economic development, while resource endowments play a more central role in explaining national performance on water and land use. The main value added of this paper is to provide concrete evidence of the usefulness of the proposed framework in OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 11286 allocating overall responsibility for environmental sustainability to sub-global scales and in informing policy makers about the need to prevent the planet's environment from tipping into an undesirable state.

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Section: Quantifying National Water and Land Boundaries On A Resourcementioning

confidence: 99%

The Environmental Sustainability of Nations: Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints against Allocated Planetary Boundaries

et al. 2015

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“…Its strengths and weaknesses are now well known, allowing the interpretation of EF analyses in a transparent and unequivocal manner (Caviglia-Harris et al 2009;Kitzes and Wackernagel, 2009;White, 2007). Different methods of country-level EF assessment have been developed for many nations (Aubauer, 2011;Bicknell et al, 1998;Ferng, 2001;Monfreda et al, 2004;Van Vuuren and Smeets, 2000;Wackernagel and Rees, 1996;Wiedmann et al, 2006). However the most widely used methodology for national footprint accounting is Global Footprint Network's standards (Global Footprint Network, 2010), where the accounts are based on a variety of international and national data sources, including databases from the United Nation Food and Agricultural Organization, the United Nations Statistics division and the International Energy Agency (FAOSTAT, UN Comtrade, IEA).…”

Section: The Ecological Footprint Indicatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Footprint Inequality: A Methodological Review and Some Results

Teixidó-Figueras

Duro

2012

SSRN Journal

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Scarcities of environmental services are no longer merely a remote hypothesis. Consequently, analysis of their inequalities between nations becomes of paramount importance for the achievement of sustainability in terms either of international policy, or of Universalist ethical principles of equity. This paper aims, on the one hand, at revising methodological aspects of the inequality measurement of certain environmental data and, on the other, at extending the scarce empirical evidence relating to the international distribution of Ecological Footprint (EF), by using a longer EF time series. Most of the techniques currently important in the literature are revised and then tested on EF data with interesting results. We look in depth at Lorenz dominance analyses and consider the underlying properties of different inequality indices. Those indices which fit best with environmental inequality measurements are CV 2 and GE(2) because of their neutrality property, however a trade-off may occur when subgroup decompositions are performed. A weighting factor decomposition method is proposed in order to isolate weighting factor changes in inequality growth rates. Finally, the only non-ambiguous way of decomposing inequality by source is the natural decomposition of CV 2 , which additionally allows the interpretation of marginal term contributions. Empirically, this paper contributes to the environmental inequality measurement of EF: this inequality has been quite stable and its change over time is due to per capita vector changes rather than population changes. Almost the entirety of the EF inequality is explainable by differences in the means between the countries of the World Bank group. This finding suggests that international environmental agreements should be attempted on a regional basis in an attempt to achieve greater consensus between the parties involved. Additionally, source decomposition warns of the dangers of confining CO 2 emissions reduction to crop-based energies because of the implications for basic needs satisfaction.

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“…Accordingly, papers focussed on how natural resources are internationally distributed are becoming of greater interest: it is noticeable that empirical applications have risen significantly in recent years (see Aubauer, 2011;Alcantara and Duro, 2004;Aldy, 2006;Dongjing et al, 2010;Duro and Padilla, 2006, 2008Cantore, 2011;Ezcurra, 2007;Wodon, 1997, 2000;List, 1999;Brooks and Sethi, 1997;Miketa and Mulder, 2005;Nguyen Van, 2005;Padilla and Serrano, 2006;Strazicich and List, 2003;Steinberger et al, 2010;White, 2007;Wu and Xu, 2010;Teixidó-Figueras andDuro, 2014, 2015;Duro and Teixido-Figueras, 2013 among others).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The building blocks of International Ecological Footprint inequality: A Regression-Based Decomposition

Teixidó-Figueras

Duro

2015

Ecological Economics

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a b s t r a c tThis paper carries out an empirical decomposition of International Inequality in the Ecological Footprint with a view to quantifying the extent of the contribution of explanatory variables such as countries' affluence, economic structure, demographic characteristics, climate and technology. Using data for the period 1993-2007, the Regression-Based Inequality Decomposition methodology we use allows us to extend the results obtained in standard environmental impact regressions (STIRPAT models), and to deal with an often neglected aspect of such models, that of equity within generations. The results obtained point towards the prioritization of policies which take into account both future and present generations. In this regard, economic redistribution should be considered as a primary environmental policy.

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Development of Ecological Footprint to an Essential Economic and Political Tool

Cited by 10 publications

References 47 publications

The Environmental Sustainability of Nations: Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints against Allocated Planetary Boundaries

The Environmental Sustainability of Nations: Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints against Allocated Planetary Boundaries

Ecological Footprint Inequality: A Methodological Review and Some Results

The building blocks of International Ecological Footprint inequality: A Regression-Based Decomposition

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