Measuring Our Impact: Towards Sustainable Management of the Global Commons

Looking around my office cubicle, with my lunch sitting on my desk, with books and binders and endless amounts of paper around me, I can't help but think about how much I consume from the Earth on a daily basis.

People consume products and services every day, and generate wastes that in some way or another have to be taken care of by nature. The impact of people's daily lives on the planet is less of a problem when it stays within the limits of Earth's capacity to provide the resources and the sinks for wastes needed to sustain the global population. But how do we know what the Earth's limits are? And how do we know how to choose what's best for the planet?

The Ecological Footprint concept was designed for calculating the impact of human consumption on the planet. Our imprint on the Earth can be measured utilizing this concept to determine how much nature we use to sustain ourselves. This may not sound like something we can use when we go grocery shopping to help decide whether to buy organic or locally grown peas, but in fact you can, because this concept was designed to determine the impact of entire nations as well as our personal impact on the environment.

Ecological Footprint calculations are based on two simple facts. First, we can keep track of most resource and waste flows. Second, these resource flows can be measured in terms of how much biologically productive land they require using prevailing technology. In the era of globalization, resources are brought from all over the world and thus generate widespread pollution. The total impact of global consumption patterns is summed up in Ecological Footprint calculations, and the unit is called a global acre.

Redefining Progress, California, provides consumers the opportunity to calculate their own personal Ecological Footprint on their web site, and see how it compares to, for example, that of the average American, who uses 24 global acres to support her lifestyle, or the average Canadian who lives on a footprint 30 percent smaller (17 acres), or even the average Italian, who lives on a footprint 60 percent smaller (9 acres). The average American lifestyle requires over four times the global average of 7.1 acres, which means that if everyone lived like Americans, our global consumption rate would require almost 6 planets to sustain it.

Consequently, one day several years ago I decided to calculate my own footprint. At the time I lived in a small college town in Indiana called Muncie, with no co-ops, little access to organic or local produce, and virtually no public transit. Growing up in a fairly large city in Northern Europe, Malmö, Sweden, I was used to having a wide range of options available to me when it came to leading a more sustainable lifestyle. I decided to calculate one footprint for each lifestyle and country and the results were staggering! On the one hand, in Muncie, I had no co-ops or sustainable foods available to me, no option of green power for my apartment, no public transit and no support from my peers; on the other hand, in Sweden, I had all of the above. My footprint increased from about 6 acres in Europe to almost 30 in the U.S. Of course, while writing this article, I had to calculate my Ecological Footprint here in Minneapolis. As it turns out, the co-ops and public transit really make a difference, together with flying much less than I used to. My footprint here is 12 acres.

The bottom line is, the choices that we make in our personal life matter. Turning the can to read the label and to find out what those labels actually mean, or spending a few extra dollars on the grocery bill to get organic produce makes a dramatic difference on our imprint on the Earth. Consumers play an integral part in shifting demands to environmentally preferable products. We can use our purchasing choices to influence production practices and what's available on the store shelves. To consume means to use up, to waste or squander. But it also entails purchasing, and putting our money to work to reverse a trend of wastefulness, both in manufacturing and in our homes. By exercising market power, we can reverse the trend of consuming more, and start a trend of consuming smarter.

For more information, please visit www.redefiningprogress.org. To calculate your personal Ecological Footprint, please visit www.earthday.net/footprint.stm