Reckoning perverse outcomes of resource conservation policies using the Ecological Footprint

Threshold Effects of Restraining Factors on China’s Provincial Ecological Footprint in the Process of Urbanization

“…As discussed in the introduction, most studies on the factors associated with environmental impacts have focused on carbon emissions and economic growth [36], whereas only a few of these studies have used the EF instead of carbon emissions in this scope. As an effective ecological model, EF analysis and accounting are widely used in environmental impact measurement [20,37], sustainability evaluations [38], and policy making and planning [27,39]. Identifying the factors that restrain decreases in the EF is important when the driving factors, such as population growth, cannot be easily reduced in the short term.…”

On the rationale and policy usefulness of Ecological Footprint Accounting: The case of Morocco

“…A few studies have explored EFA policy potential (Abdullatif and Alam, 2011;Bagliani et al, 2008;Bassi et al, 2011;Gondran, 2012;Hopton and White, 2012;Kuzyk, 2012;Lawrence and Robinson, 2014;Niccolucci et al, 2009;Rugani et al, 2014), but a full picture of its policy usefulness has to date not been presented. Concerns about the Ecological Footprint's application in policy setting are likely due to acknowledged methodological shortcomings (Kitzes et al, 2009b), potential results misinterpretation and Ecological Footprint users' habit of reporting only aggregate results.…”

Ecological Footprint: Informative and evolving – A response to van den Bergh and Grazi (2014)

“…However, it should be noted that a small number of authors have written the majority of the recent critical articles in the last two years. At the same time, a larger, more diverse group of authors is increasingly applying Ecological Footprint accounting for resource management and policy support purposes (e.g., White, 2007;Niccolucci et al, 2007Niccolucci et al, , 2012Kissinger et al, 2011;Kuzyk, 2012;Jury et al, 2013;Lawrence and Robinson, 2014;Lambrechts and Van Liedekerke, 2014;Li et al, 2014;Rugani et al, 2014;Teixidó-Figueras and Duro, 2014; see also Bastianoni et al (2013) for a comprehensive list) or proactively developing alternative Footprint approaches (e.g., Hopton and White, 2012;Ferng, 2014;Liu et al, 2014;Pelletier et al, 2014-see also Galli, 2015 in an attempt to address some shortcomings of Global Footprint Network's Ecological Footprint method.…”