Ecological footprint of Taiwan: A discussion of its implications for urban and rural sustainable development

Taiwan’s Ecological Footprint (1994–2011)

“…The calculation of biocapacity in particular areas enables the human demand made on these areas to be compared with their available natural capital. Academics and practitioners around the world are increasingly emphasizing ecological footprint accounting [12,22,24,26]. The ecological footprint is a particularly important reference index for governments that are setting national sustainable development policies [27,28].…”

“…In addition to the increasing attention paid to the concepts of ecological footprint and ecological deficit, eco-efficiency has recently been applied to describe the effectiveness with which ecological resources are used to meet human demands [12,45]. Eco-efficiency is a ratio of economic value added to some measurements of environmental impacts; restated, the higher the value added, the more efficient is the use of environmental services [46].…”

“…Although the standard ecological footprint method alone does not allow for the complete evaluation of the different environmental profile [21], York et al [47] measured ecological footprint under conditions of regional ecological resource use, and used GDP as the value of the regional human demand to yield the calculation for eco-efficiency. Through the ecological footprint of the time series to provide a comparison for per capita GDP in different years, it is possible to examine whether a country develops its economy environmentally [12]. …”

“…A follow-up study in 2006 included the contribution of CO 2 emissions to the footprint [11]. Wang et al [12] calculated Taiwan's ecological footprint from 1994-2007 and found that it was 6.54 gha per person in 2007. The total ecological footprint of Taiwan was 42 times the area of Taiwan.…”

The Power of Urban Planning on Environmental Sustainability: A Focus Group Study in Finland

“…Even if municipalities are actively engaged in developing organizational capacity in sustainability, they have a relatively low level of financial and managerial capacity in this regard and tend to rely more on internal strategies and a top-down approach of acquiring technical expertise from professionals [55]. A case study by Book et al [56] shows that the state remains a crucial actor in sustainability governance.…”