1. What is the Ecological Footprint?
The Ecological Footprint is a sustainability indicator that takes a consumer approach to measure human demand on natural resources. It measures how much biologically productive land and sea is required by a given population or activity to be sustained. Productive land and sea areas support human demands for food, fibre, timber, energy, and space for infrastructure and absorb the waste products from the human economy (Derived from Global Footprint Network website).
2. What is the biocapacity?
The biocapacity represents the benchmark to account for human pressure on the environment. It is defined as the rate of resource supply and waste disposal that can be sustained on a given territory or at the global scale. So far, the Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative reviewed data used for the Ecological Footprint calculation only, while biocapacity data will be possibly approached in the second year of the Initiative.
3. What is a safe Ecological Footprint for the planet?
To have a sustainable life means to live well (both socially and economically), within the limits of the one planet we have. The Ecological Footprint only tracks whether humanity is living within the Earth’s limits.
At global level, therefore, our demand on natural resources (Ecological Footprint) meets minimum conditions for sustainability only if it is equal, or ideally lower than the overall resource supply (Biocapacity) that nature offers.
We are all global citizens, particularly in the UAE as our society depends heavily on external resources to support our needs. Therefore, the Footprint can help us understand how much we are contributing, as individual or as a nation, to the global unsustainability and what we can locally do to help solve the global problem (Think globally, act locally).
4. Is the Ecological Footprint the same as the carbon Footprint?
The carbon Footprint is just one of the six components[1][1] of a nation’s Ecological Footprint and refers to the global forest area that would be necessary to absorb the amount of CO2 emissions released by the residents of a country or associated with a given activity. In the case of the UAE, the carbon Footprint contributed to nearly 80% of the overall Ecological Footprint in 2005 (according to the Living Planet Report 2008). Recently, the term ‘carbon footprint’ has also been used in the climate change debate, although in this context it simply refers to the tonnes of CO2 emissions rising from fossil fuel use, rather than to the area needed for CO2 sequestration.
5. How the carbon Footprint adds value to simple carbon emissions calculations?
The carbon Footprint puts the magnitude of emissions into a meaningful context. Many people do not know how to interpret 1,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, but they can easily understand that if 1,000 global hectares would be required to absorb this carbon, but only 500 global hectares are available, this is a problem if we want to prevent this waste product from building up around us.
The Ecological Footprint provides an overarching systems perspective that can reveal spill-over effects, when reducing demand in one area leads to an increase in demand elsewhere. For example, will shifting from fossil fuels to biomass fuels decrease or increase humanity’s overall demand on the planet’s biological capacity? Would increasing the use of biomass fuels be more or less effective than returning cropland to forest cover? (Source: Global Footprint Network website).
6. What are ecological creditor and ecological debtor countries?
Footprint and biocapacity values can be compared in an ecological balance to show whether a nation is characterized by an ecological reserve or reminder situation.
Ecological creditors are countries characterized by a demand on natural resources (Footprint) lower than national resource availability (biocapacity), while ecological debtors are countries that consume more resources that those available within the country.
This is one of the several messages that can be derived from the Ecological Footprint methodology.
7. Is the Footprint an omni comprehensive indicator?
No single model or set of environmental accounts can capture every complexity of the world’s many different ecological systems. As sustainability includes environmental, economic and social aspects, only one single indicator may not be enough to provide a comprehensive picture.
The Ecological Footprint does not attempt to capture every aspect of sustainability. Sustainability means living well, within the means of nature, and the Ecological Footprint highlights a minimum condition that addresses only the second part of this equation. The Footprint does not tell us whether a system is “sustainable” or not but rather tells us whether or not the minimum condition is being met.
Despite the level of scientific robustness of any single indicator, decisions should never be taken by looking at only one indicator as a fuller picture of the state of the planet can be gained by combining Footprint accounts with complementary indicators tracking other important aspects of sustainability.
8. What is included and what is not (in Ecological Footprint accounts)?
The Ecological Footprint includes only those aspects of resource consumption and waste production for which the Earth has regenerative capacity, and where data exist that allow this demand to be expressed in terms of productive area (e.g., food consumption, transportation, housing and use of good and services).
Materials that are not created by biological processes nor absorbed by biological systems (heavy metals, radioactive materials or persistent synthetic compounds) do not have a defined Ecological Footprint and thus the method cannot be used for air or water quality assessments; nor can it track pollution in terms of waste generation, toxicity, and the like.
9. Does the Ecological Footprint take into account other species?
The Ecological Footprint is not an indicator of the state of biodiversity, and the impact of a particular activity or process on biodiversity does not directly affect the Ecological Footprint calculation for that activity.
However, the Ecological Footprint supports biodiversity assessment and conservation as, for example, it can be used as a large scale indicator of the underlying drivers or pressures that cause biodiversity loss (Derived from Global Footprint Network website).
10. Is the Ecological Footprint a measure of carrying capacity?
Many species have clearly defined and consistent consumption needs, making carrying capacity[1][2] relatively easy to define and calculate. For humans, however, carrying capacity estimates require assumptions about future per-person resource consumption, standards of living and “wants” (as distinct from “needs”), productivity of the biosphere, and advances in technology. An area’s carrying capacity for humans is thus inherently speculative, and difficult to define.
Ecological Footprint accounts approach the carrying capacity question from a different angle. Instead of asking how many people could be supported on the planet, the Ecological Footprint asks how many planets are actually necessary to support all of the people living on the planet in a given year, under that year’s standard of living, biological production, and technology (Derived from Global Footprint Network website).
[1][1] Together with cropland Footprint, grazing land Footprint, forest Footprint, fishing ground Footprint, and built-up land Footprint.
[1][2] Carrying capacity is a technical term that refers to the maximum population of a species that a given land or marine area could support without altering its ability to sustain future populations.
1. How is the Ecological Footprint calculated?
The Ecological Footprint of a person is calculated by considering all of the biological materials consumed, and resulting waste generated, by that person in a given year. These materials and wastes each demand ecologically productive areas, such as cropland to grow potatoes, or forest to sequester CO2 emissions.
All of these materials and wastes are first individually translated into an equivalent amount of hectares by dividing the total amount of resource consumed (or waste generated) by that person by the global average yield of the land type that produces that resource (or absorbs that waste). The number of hectares that result from this calculation are then converted to global hectares using yield and equivalence factors. Adding together all global hectares needed to support the resource consumed and waste generated by the person gives that person’s Ecological Footprint.
The overall Ecological Footprint of a nation is finally obtained by multiplying the above per capita value by that nation’s population (Derived from Global Footprint Network website).
2. What is a global hectare?
Footprint accounts include six major types of bioproductive areas, cropland, grazing land, forests, fisheries, energy land and built-up land, which have a different ability to produce useful goods and services for humans[1]. To allow these different types of land to be compared and added together, a common denominator, the global hectare, needs to be used. Physical hectares of different land types are converted into global hectares by means of equivalence and yield factors.
A global hectare (gha) is thus defined as a hectare with world-average productivity for all biologically productive land and water in a given year.
Global hectares are the common, standardized unit used for reporting Ecological Footprint and biocapacity across time and for areas throughout the world (Derived from Global Footprint Network website).
3. What are yield and equivalence factors?
Yield and equivalence factors are scaling factors used to convert physical hectares of different types of bioproductive land into the common unit of global hectares.
Yield factors are evaluated annually for each nation and land type and capture the difference between local and world-average productivity within a given land type. A yield factor of 3 for a Brazilian forest, for example, means that an average hectare of forest in Brazil is 3 times more productive than a world-average hectare of forest.
Equivalence factors are calculated annually for each land type but are the same for each nation. They convert one hectare of world-average land of a specific land type, such as cropland or forest, into an equivalent number of global hectares. An equivalence factor of 2.2 for world-average croplands, for example, means that each hectare of world-average cropland is 2.2 times more productive than a world-average hectare of all biologically productive land and sea area on Earth.
4. How do we convert gha to the number of planets?
The Number of planets is calculated by dividing the per capita Footprint by world average biocapacity.
[1] One hectare of cropland can produce a greater quantity of useful and valuable food products than a single hectare of grazing land, for example. By converting both cropland and pasture into global hectares, they can be compared on an equal basis and added together.
1. What is the Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative? When and why was it launched?The Al Basama Al Beeiya (Ecological Footprint) Initiative is a two-year federal initiative aiming at better understanding the Footprint methodology, reviewing UAE’s Footprint status, contributing to the development of the science of the Footprint from a UAE perspective and looking at its use in policy development and evaluation.The Initiative was launched in October 2007 as a national effort to ensure a sustainable future by measuring and understanding the impact of our ways of living on planet earth. The Initiative, which involves the UAE Ministry of Environment and Water, the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI), the Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS-WWF) and Global Footprint Network made the UAE the third country in the world to embark on such in-depth research collaboration, after Switzerland and Japan.
2. Is the Ecological Footprint applicable to the UAE and the other arid countries?The Ecological Footprint simply looks at consumption and converts our "lifestyles" into the natural resources needed to sustain us. As all of us irrespective of where we come from or which country we belong to consume Earth’s resources and place demand on the Earth’s natural capital, the Footprint is applicable to every country and cross-country comparisons become possible. Per capita comparisons are particularly useful as they allow the contextual life-styles to be compared. Analysis of per capita consumption patterns informs policy and design decisions, and shows the natural resource demand nations place in order to provide a particular life style to their inhabitants.
3. What is the per capita Footprint of the UAE inhabitants and why is it high?The Living Planet Report 2008 reports a per capita Footprint of 9.5 global hectares (gha) for the year 2005, ranking the UAE as the country with the highest per capita value. This means that if everyone in the world lived like an average resident of the UAE, humanity would need 4.5 planets to sustain our consumption.Having one of the worlds largest hydrocarbon wealth has allowed the nation to capitalise on this resource and, in turn, increase its per capita GDP and diversify its economy. High national purchasing power has allowed the UAE to import natural resources that it does not possess within its borders. This has helped the country to develop economically and improve the lifestyles of the resident population. However, this development has also had consequences such as large and rapidly rising demand for energy and other resources.This growing consumption, coupled with the fact that policies in the country (until 2005) did not offer sufficient options for a resource conscious lifestyle, resulted in the country’s high Ecological Footprint.
4. How accurate and reliable is the 2008 UAE per capita Footprint value?In the first year, the Initiative has contributed to a more robust representation of the country’s Ecological Footprint by verifying data on population and the carbon Footprint, the main component of the overall UAE Footprint value (~80%). Although five other Footprint components need to be reviewed (Phase 2 of the Initiative) and gaps still exist in some of the UAE locally generated data, as an estimate the value of 9.5 gha per capita for the UAE is reasonable and indicative of the nation’s consumption patterns.
5. Why does the Living Planet Report 2008 represent 2005 Ecological Footprints?The time lag between the publication year (2008) and the data year (2005) is due to the need to ensure that for all the 150+ countries, the most updated and complete data are used consistently. Data used to calculate Footprint values reported in the Living Planet Report are drawn from official international databases.
6. What is the overall Footprint of the UAE? To what extent is the nation contributing to the overall demand on world biocapacity?The overall Footprint of a nation can be understood to be the result of 2 key variables - its population and its per capita Footprint. Despite its high per capita Footprint value, the demand UAE as a nation placed on global resources in 2005 was approximately 0.32% of world's biocapacity.However, any significant change in population size or per capita consumption level in the UAE will lead to a change in its status with respect to global consumption, which is why the UAE government is looking to implement initiatives for education and change now.
7. How will a growing population influence the UAE Footprint (in both overall and per capita terms)?Per capita Footprint and population size are two independent variables not influencing each other. However, their product gives the overall Ecological Footprint of a nation. An increase in the per capita Footprint value as well as a growing population, both cause the increase of the overall nation's Ecological Footprint. More resources and ecosystem services are demanded by each given Nation to sustain the needs of a growing population, even when the consumption pattern of each individual (per capita Footprint) remains stable.
8. Is the high per capita UAE Footprint value a consequence of the huge production of oil?The Ecological Footprint uses a consumer approach (or responsibility principle) and therefore Footprint assessments refer to the nations' net/apparent consumption of resources and production of wastes. As a consequence, only the proportion of the oil locally produced that is actually consumed within the nation contributes to the UAE's Footprint, while the proportion of the oil produced in the UAE that is exported abroad contributes to the national Footprints of the importing countries.
9. How does the Ecological Footprint account for the use of fossil fuels?Fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are extracted from the Earth’s crust and not renewable in ecological time spans. When these fuels burn, carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted. To keep CO2 levels in the atmosphere from rising, only two options exist: human technological sequestration of these emissions, such as deep well injection; or natural sequestration through photosynthesis. Currently, negligible amounts of CO2 are sequestered by human means. The carbon Footprint is thus calculated by estimating the world-average forest area that would be required to sequester, through photosynthesis, and retain that part of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions not absorbed by the oceans and not sequestered away from the biosphere through other measures, such as carbon capture and storage.Calculating the Footprint of carbon emissions in this way does not imply that carbon sequestration is the key to resolve global climate change, but it rather shows that the biosphere does not have sufficient capacity to cope with current levels of CO2 emissions.
10. How are trade movements accounted in the National Footprint Accounts?To this day, the method used by Global Footprint Network converts the amount of traded products into global hectares by means of Footprint intensities. These intensities are derived from ecosystem yields combined with embodied material and energy values usually drawn from LCA analyses. Such calculation provides an estimate of total global hectares imported or exported. It has to be underlined that, by importing products, a nation is importing the responsibility for the use of all of the resources needed to produce those products. For instance, if a country imports 1 tonne of mutton, the amount of cropland, grazing land, and energy land required (in the exporting country) to produce this tonne of mutton are used to calculate the above mentioned Footprint intensities. This, multiplied by the traded amount, provides the total Footprint of the imported product. In this manner, trade cuts across all the land types.
11. Is the high Footprint value of the UAE a consequence of, or linked to, the nation’s low biocapacity?A nation’s Footprint is determined by its inhabitants and their consumption patterns, not by its availability of resources (biocapacity). Footprint and biocapacity values can be compared to each other but their calculation procedures are totally independent. This means that countries with high biocapacity values can have either high or low Footprint values as well as country with low biocapacities can have either low or high Footprint values. To support their population, wealthy nations with low biocapacities, may need to rely on resources drawn from outside their borders, with this possibly causing an increase in their Ecological Footprint. This, however, may not be possible for countries with the same low biocapacity but low GDP, which cannot afford huge trade movements.
12. Is it possible to compare the Footprint value of the UAE reported in the Living Planet Report 2008 and 2006?Although a considerable reduction can be noted between the 2003 UAE per capita Ecological Footprint (11.87 gha) reported in the LPR 2006 and the 2005 UAE per capita Ecological Footprint (9.5 gha) reported in the LPR 2008 Footprint, these results are not directly comparable. This is due to improvements (e.g., grazing land Footprint calculation) and changes (e.g., the exclusion of nuclear energy from the LPR 2008) in the Footprint methodology as well as to the current inclusion of trade data and embodied energy coefficient for oil and gas. Each time there is an improvement in the methodology, Footprint and biocapacity time trends are back calculated at the global level to ensure temporal consistency and comparability.
13. What methodological improvements have been included in the 2008 edition of the National Footprint Accounts?The most significant revision of the National Footprint Accounts since the Living Planet Report 2006 was in response to changes in the structure of the UN FAO’s Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT). Most notably, raw data instead of Food Balance Sheets (no longer reported in the new FAOSTAT database) are used in the current edition of the National Footprint Accounts, this improving the resolution of the Accounts (crops expanded from 80 to 180 product categories, livestock from 10 to 20, forest from 6 to 30, 150 species of fish are now tracked in the accounts, rather than just the 10 that were previously included). New extraction rates needed to convert processed products into primary product equivalents are now used. The grazing module has also been improved. The Accounts now employ an NPP methodology developed by IFF Social Ecology Institute in Vienna. Further ‘Other Wooded Land’ is now part of grazing land. In this edition, productive area has been expanded to include some lower-productivity forest. This previously excluded area is primarily comprised of tundra (Source: derived from Living Planet Report 2008).
14. Why is nuclear no longer a separate Ecological Footprint component?Nuclear power has been included as a separate Footprint component in the Living Planet Report since 2000. Because it is difficult to calculate the extent of the nuclear demand on the biosphere, it was assumed that one unit of nuclear electricity had an equivalent Footprint to one unit of electricity produced with a world average mix of fossil fuels.After extensive discussions and consultations, Global Footprint Network’s National Accounts Committee recommended eliminating the nuclear land component from the National Footprint Accounts in order to increase their scientific consistency. This change has been implemented in the 2008 edition of the National Footprint Accounts. The exclusion of the nuclear Footprint component does not reflect a stance on nuclear energy. It simply acknowledges that only few aspects of nuclear energy (e.g., carbon emissions associated with nuclear electricity) are easily measured in terms of demand on regenerative capacity, the research question addressed by the Ecological Footprint (Derived from Living Planet Report 2008)
15. Does the Ecological Footprint determine what is a “fair” or “equitable” use of resources?The Ecological Footprint is a science-based ecological accounting tool that reports the current state of demand for productive area, along with who demands it, and the amount of productive area available. Footprint accounts quantitatively describe the demand of any individual or a population, but they do not themselves draw conclusions or make assumptions about who should be using what. Rather, these are social and political choices that the Ecological Footprint itself cannot make. While the Ecological Footprint can help to inform these choices, conclusions about what represents a “fair share” or an “equitable use” are moral and ethical choices, and the Ecological Footprint accounts are descriptive in nature (Derived from Global Footprint Network website).
16. Does it matter in the Footprint calculation where goods and services come from?As per the Footprint methodology, world-average yields are currently needed to calculate the Ecological Footprint of traded good and services, irrespective of their place of origin. However, nation-specific values, allowing distinguishing the place of origin, could be used by modifying the Footprint methodology to include a full bilateral trade database, which would require to be developed.
17. How can the UAE reduce its per capita Footprint?The country is uniquely placed as a relatively young and wealthy nation, with the means to reduce its Footprint. The capitalisation of oil wealth that so far has contributed to attain the current standard of living can now play a major role in the transition towards a sustainable society. Non-renewable resources, such as oil, could be exploited in a quasi-sustainable manner by investing the capital coming from them in the development of renewable substitutes (e.g., solar panel. photovoltaic panel, wind plants, etc) thereby helping to secure needs of societies beyond the oil age. The UAE is also looking to integrate sustainability as a core value in all its developmental activities, and many existing initiatives (e.g., Masdar city, green building codes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, carbon capture and storage by ADNOC and Masdar, zero gas flaring policy of ADNOC, the development of hybrid vehicles and the metro by Dubai RTA as well as environmental education and awareness campaigns) are all steps in the right direction.
18. How does the Ecological Footprint treat water usage?Water usage is an important environmental issue, especially in a country like the UAE that needs to desalinate most of the water it uses. Although freshwater is a natural resource cycled through the biosphere, it is not itself a material made by biologically productive area, or a waste absorbed by it. Ecosystems simply do not create water in the same manner as timber, fish, or fiber products. As a result, it is not possible to calculate the Ecological Footprint of water in the sense of the bioproductive area needed to produce a given quantity of water. However, it is possible to account the Ecological Footprint required for a utility to provide a given supply of water (e.g., energy needed for water desalination and distribution).
19. What is the Water Footprint? Is the Al Basama Al Beeiya also involved in the review of the UAE Water Footprint?For the first time, the Living Planet Report 2008 includes a third measure, the Water Footprint, to show the demand placed on national, regional and global water resources by human consumption of goods and services. The Water Footprint of an individual or community is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community. Although the term Water Footprint is similar to Ecological Footprint, they refer to two different indicators and the Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative is not involved in reviewing Water Footprint values for the UAE.
20. How does the Footprint relate to other work on environmental indicators (e.g., EPI) in the UAE?The UAE interest in understanding and measuring sustainability began at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) in 2006, where the Environmental Performance Index was presented. This interest was reinforced with the launch of the Living Planet Report 2006 which ranked UAE as the country with the highest per capita Ecological Footprint amongst over 150 countries.Currently, the work on environmental indicators in the UAE includes, among others, the Al Basama Al Beeiya (Ecological Footprint) Initiative and the developed of an improved Environmental Performance Index for the Abu Dhabi Emirate by the Abu Dhabi Global Environment Data Initiative (AGEDI).
21. What are the plans for phase II of the Initiative?During the second year of the Initiative, the Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative will work on further reviewing carbon Footprint data and continuing a systematic investigation on data used for the calculation of the remaining land types. Improvements in the understanding of the Footprint methodology as well as capacity building among key stakeholders in the UAE will be ensured with the long term goal of institutionalizing the Ecological Footprint beyond the life of the Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative.Finally, the Initiative will work towards the end of providing a detailed picture of the sectors of the UAE economy that contribute the most to the national Footprint. Areas that require environmental policies to be established will be highlighted and the Footprint will be used for scenario analysis to test the effectiveness of policies in place.
22. How seriously is the Government taking the Initiative?This is evident from the partners involved in the Initiative. The Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative is a federal initiative involving the UAE Ministry of Environment and Water, the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI) and the Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS-WWF). The complementary initiatives of the Government such as the green building codes (list more like, energy water campaign, introduction of hybrid vehicles in the taxi force in Dubai) are evidence of the increasing importance being given at the federal and local Government level on ensuring not just that sustainable development is of key interest but also tools to evaluate these initiatives are used. Furthermore, the Initiative has ensured that there is active participation amongst all local and federal ministries. Their understanding of the importance of this Initiative for the country and foresight is evident by their membership to the high-level steering committee of the Al Basama Al Beeiya Initiative.
23. How would initiatives like Masdar, the green building code, etc impact on the UAE Footprint?These existing initiatives are a welcome step in the right direction; however the results of these efforts will not be seen in the Living Planet Report 2008 as it is based on 2005 data. Further, there is a practical time lag between the time policies are formulated to the time they are implemented, to when their results become visible, and there is a natural delay between the time actions are taken to the time their consequences become visible in nature. Therefore, we can expect the key changes introduced by the UAE government today to become visible in years to come.