Global Footprint Network Skoll Awardee Profile

Organization Overview

Key Info

Social Entrepreneur Mathis Wackernagel, Susan Burns

Year Awarded 2007

Issue Area Addressed Environmental Sustainability, Sustainable Markets

Sub Issue Area Addressed Arresting Deforestation, Clean Energy, International Justice, Living Conditions, Ocean Ecosystems, Responsible Supply Chains, Water Management, Women's and Girls' Education

Countries Served USA, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guyana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malawi, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vietnam, Zambia

Website http://www.footprintnetwork.org

Twitter handle EndOvershoot

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GlobalFootprintNe twork

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/GlobalFootpri ntNet

About the Organization

Our economies are running Bernie Madoff-style pyramid schemes with the planet. As a result, humanity’s demands on nature now exceed what Earth can replenish, eroding our natural capital and compromising future resource regeneration. Like any such scheme, this one, if unattended, is bound to lead to a crash. Such a crash would unravel much of our progress.

Global Footprint Network started in 2003 to reverse these trends and escape the ecological pyramid scheme. Since today’s decisions shape our future, the Network focuses on shifting decision-making toward creating a world where all can thrive within the means of our planet (“one-planet prosperity”). The challenge is to show decision-makers that decisions made in sync with our planet’s physical reality produce better outcomes for them, and for the world.

Global Footprint Network’s offering is built on a comprehensive resource-accounting approach that allows countries, cities, and companies to assess how much demand they put on nature against how much Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate. Results show how resource deficits are undermining success and how resource security is becoming the enabling factor for prosperity. The Network also develops empowering psychological approaches and effective narratives designed to shape the common understanding that sustainability is necessary for one’s own success. Inspiring and actionable case studies produce a sense of ownership (“skin in the game”) and generate measurable outcomes.

Impact

Since inception in 2003, Global Footprint Network has engaged with over 57 national governments and over 100 regional governments including cities. International organizations use their data, such as in the WWF, UNEP, EEA, and WEF Competitiveness Report. With the only comprehensive resource accounts in the world that compare human demand for biological resources against what the planet can renew, Global Footprint Network’s data is accessed by 250k users per year through their open data platform, with 30 percent annual growth. The personal Footprint Calculator (footprintcalculator.org) serves three million users per year (30 percent annual growth rate). The Earth Overshoot Day campaign (overshootday.org) reached four billion+ media impressions in 2019 through 6,500 documented news stories in 121 countries (25 percentsteady annual increase for four years), and was discussed by Pope Francis and Greta Thunberg.

Path to Scale

We strive to shift decision makers’ mindsets toward a deeply personal commitment where they recognize that one-planet compatible action is essential for their own success. We achieve this by producing robust data, tools, and analyses. We promote it by running large-scale engagement campaigns that help shape public discourse.

Social Entrepreneur

Mathis Wackernagel’s father introduced him to The Limits to Growth when he was 10, and he grew up with a vivid awareness of the potential for global ecological disruption. Mathis became an engineer to advance the theme of “small is beautiful” and renewable energy. He developed the Ecological Footprint while completing his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia. He co- founded Global Footprint Network as the vehicle to apply his landmark work to influence individuals, businesses and governments to conserve, protect and live in balance with our earth’s bounty. Susan Burns, also an engineer, is a lifelong nature enthusiast and founder of Natural Strategies, a sustainability consulting firm. Susan created a business case for sustainability and promoted innovative concepts in pollution prevention and industrial ecology. The couple launched Global Footprint Network in 2003 to advance the Ecological Footprint, coordinate research, develop methodology standards and provide decision makers with resource accounts to help humans operate within the Earth’s ecological limits.

Susan transitioned out of executive leadership to focus on leading Global Footprint Network Finance for Change program in 2016, but remains on the Board.

Equilibrium Overview

Current Equilibrium

Since the 1970s, humans have been using more resources than the Earth can provide. Humanity is in global overshoot, now using the planet's ecological assets 60% faster than it can regenerate - "demanding 1.7 earths". Overshoot is risky and unsustainable, yet continues to grow due to multiple factors - growing populations, increasing yet unequal human demand and insufficient increase in efficiency to compensate for this demand. While parts of overshoot are recognized (carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning, over-fishing, deforestation, groundwater depletion), resource security is not considered to be a parameter for economic success by governments and institutions. The blame for the overshoot falls upon all parties, but the need to incorporate environmental risks and factors into decision-making is often unrealized. In working to address the challenges of developing their countries, government leaders are faced with the temptation of making decisions focused on short-term gains that deplete their ecological capital for the future, and they lack the information and tools to properly account for it. Similarly, the business community is focused on growing profits and it lacks the ability to account for future ecological consequences of its actions. What results is insufficient accountability towards the environment, leading to a constant depletion of the Earth’s resources.

New Equilibrium

In the new equilibrium, major institutions (governments, investors, economic and public policy academics) consider resource scarcity in their decision-making and align their investments and policies to become a force for global sustainability. Decision makers at every level employ data- driven metrics to manage their ecological capital and inform their decisions. Communities and city planners worldwide use these tools to guide land use and budget decisions, track sustainability progress and support better sustainability policy and actions. Human demands on nature are monitored as closely as the stock market, and governments as well as the business community can use this data to accurately understand the ecological risks and benefits associated with their decisions. The Earth’s resources are managed sustainably by each responsible actor, ensuring that all people thrive within the means of our one planet. Individuals, from all sectors of society, are key to creating this transformational change.

Innovation

Global Footprint Network brings quantitative clarity into the sustainability debate: it measures to what extent humans live within the means of one planet. It puts together competing demands in one equation – carbon emissions, food, land for cities, forest products, etc. – and provides a platform for governments, businesses and individuals to measure their resource consumption, or “Ecological Footprint.” There is currently no other metric that compares how much humans use to what our planet’s ecosystems can renew. Global Footprint Network primary activities include resource accounting and communications with the goal of shifting the sustainability paradigm, away from marginal activities to a recognition that there is an absolute resource budget, and that living within that budget (“one-planet prosperity”) is desirable, possible and financially beneficial. Global Footprint Network aims to build a movement for one-planet prosperity by: Engaging larger and more diverse audiences to address the problems of resource security and to end overshoot [1].Making Ecological Footprint data widely available – data that is accurate, relevant and useful –with the goal to inform risk assessments and decisions in favor of sustainability.Ensuring that comprehensive National Footprint Accounts, the foundational data set, are solid, and making resource challenges measurable and understandable at both the national and global level. This is being done through the following integrated initiatives: 1. Disseminating messages and insights. Since 2008, the key entry point for Global Footprint Network’s communications efforts has been the online Ecological Footprint Calculator, which has had approximately 2.2 million annual users. In August 2017, a new mobile version was launched and received more than 500,000 users in less than three months. The number of new users is growing, and as the organization continues to scale, it is adapting how it engages with new followers to maximize impact. In 2016, Global Footprint Network created an Open Data Platform called Footprint Explorer, which contains annual data on the Ecological Footprint and bio-capacity of nearly every country since 1961. The move to an open data platform allows broader sharing of Global Footprint Network’s resources with a larger audience. Previously, Global Footprint Network sold data licenses, which was not a major source of income and created barriers to adoption, limiting the overall number of users. With the launch of the open data platform, more people have access to this data and can use the tool to gain a better understanding of a country’s resource situation and analyze risks. The intention of the open data platform is to create a community of users to foster exchanges and to create new data applications. Ultimately, the number of data downloads demonstrates some extent of embeddedness in policy discourses since people engaged in these conversations would be interested in the data, focusing Global Footprint Network on a specific audience of economic decision-makers. Earth Overshoot Day is the date when humanity’s annual demand on nature exceeds what Earth can regenerate over the entire year. In 2017, this date fell on August 2. Through this media campaign, followers promote global conversations about sustainability that reach over one billion media impressions annually. In 2017, Global Footprint Network invited people to “move the date” of Overshoot Day, by asking them to participate in civic and individual actions. If the date is shifted five days every year, humanity will be back to one-planet living before 2050. By extending the #MoveTheDate campaign throughout the year, expanding partnerships and adding country-specific overshoot day campaigns, Global Footprint Network aims to amplify the desire for a sustainable future – and to show that such a shift is possible. 2. Collaborating with on-the ground projects to highlight intriguing examples of how sustainability can be advanced. These projects include city Footprint assessments, country studies and investment appraisals. These examples are needed to show audiences how this information can be used and how it is making a difference. New projects underway include collaboration with the government of Scotland, cities in Portugal and the Colombian Province of Nariño. 3. Ensuring credibility by building an international academic network that engenders growing scientific robustness, government acceptance, persistence and reliability of the National Footprint Accounts. Broad use of this data is a prerequisite for decisions to be informed by resource limitations. [1] Overshoot takes place when humanity exceeds what the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate in a year.

Ambition for Change

Governments and companies make decisions consistent with the vision that all can thrive within the means of our one planet.

In five years, our campaigns, including Earth Overshoot Day and #MoveTheDate, reach 10 billion media impressions, 10 million actively participate, and one million use Ecological Footprint data as input to their decision-making.