Living Planet Report 2006

MEDIA BACKGROUNDER

This document includes quotations about the report, definitions of key concepts, key facts and findings, an explanation of the three scenarios laid out in the report, and some common questions and answers about ecological overshoot. Please contact Brooking Gatewood – [email protected] if you have any further questions.

QUOTATIONS

“Answering the question “how can we live well within the means of one planet?” is the main research challenge of the 21st century.” - Mathis Wackernagel, Executive Director, Global Footprint Network.

``We are in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the Earth can replace them. The consequences of this are predictable and dire. It is time to make some vital choices. Change that improves living standards while reducing our impact on the natural world will not be easy. The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging over-consumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable living.” - James Leape, Director General, WWF

“Humanity is living off its ecological credit card. While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to liquidation of the planet’s ecological assets, and the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and agricultural land upon which our economy depends.” - Mathis Wackernagel, Executive Director, Global Footprint Network.

“The bottomline of this report could not be more clear – for twenty years we’ve lived our lives in a way that far exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth. The choices we make today will shape the possibilities for the generations which follow us. The fact that we live beyond our means in our use of natural resources will surely limit opportunities for future generations that follow.” - Carter Roberts, President and CEO of WWF US

“This report makes clear that if humanity continues with business as usual, by mid-century we will be using more than twice what the planet can produce. But it also explores how humanity

Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report 2006 Backgrounder 1 can end this overshoot by shrinking the gap between ecological supply and demand.” - Dr. Steven Goldfinger, Senior Scientist, Global Footprint Network

“The most precious resources in the 21st century will be natural resources, particularly in a finite world with rapidly growing populations and consumption. Every day we make decisions about where to invest our money, what kind of policies we demand from our political system and how we live our lives. These decisions will determine our resource demand into the future, and whether or not there will be natural resources to meet it.” - Carter Roberts, President and CEO of WWF US

KEY CONCEPTS

Ecological overshoot means exceeding the earth’s regenerative capacity. Ecological overshoot occurs when humanity’s demand on nature exceeds what the biosphere can supply.

The Ecological Footprint measures how much productive area it takes to support everything that we do – eating, driving, buying things, etc. (how much nature we have, how much we use, and who uses what). It represents the area of biologically productive land and water a population (e.g., an individual, city, or all of humanity) requires to provide the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste, using prevailing technology.

Biocapacity measures the capacity of ecosystems to produce the biological materials we use and to absorb the wastes we generate, using current management schemes and technologies.

Ecological deficit is the amount by which a country’s, a region’s, or the planet’s Ecological Footprint exceeds its biocapacity for a given year.

Ecological debt is the sum of a country’s, a region’s, or the planet’s ecological deficit over time. Globally, we have been accumulating ecological debt since the mid 1980s. The effects of running an ecological debt can include, for example depleted fisheries and forests, and a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index that measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth; literacy and education, as measured by the adult literacy rate and the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools; and a decent standard of living, as measured by GDP. The United Nations Development Program defines an HDI of 0.8 as the minimum criteria for high human development.

The Living Planet Index is a measure of biodiversity. It reflects the populations of wild vertebrate species around the world over time, and as such serves as an indicator of the state of the world's natural ecosystems. The index includes 695 terrestrial species, 344 freshwater species and 274 marine species.

Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report 2006 Backgrounder 2 KEY FINDINGS

• Global Footprint Network, which co-authored the report, calculates that in 2003 humanity's Ecological Footprint was 25 per cent larger than the planet’s biocapacity. This ecological ‘overshoot’ means that it now takes about one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year.

• Overshoot has increased by 4 per cent in the two years since the last Living Planet Report, which was based on 2001 data, and is projected to rise to 30 per cent in 2006. The Living Planet Index indicates that planetary biodiversity has declined by about 30 per cent from 1970 to 2003.

• The carbon dioxide Footprint, which accounts for the use of fossil fuels, is almost half the total global Footprint, and is its fastest growing component, increasing more than nine fold from 1961 to 2003.

• This report predicts that if we continue with business as usual, by 2050 humanity’s Ecological Footprint will be 100 per cent larger than the planet’s biocapacity – that is, it would take two years for the planet to regenerate what we use in one year.

• A key policy implication of the report is about avoiding resource traps. Getting out of overshoot means not building long-lasting infrastructure that will continuously require a large throughput of resources. “Slow things first” means building smart for the future, by ensuring that infrastructure which is only slowly replaced can operate on as small a Footprint as possible.

• The report finds that almost no country today meets the sustainable development challenge—to have both a high quality of life, defined here by the United Nations Human Development Index, and an average Footprint that doesn’t exceed the biological capacity available per person on the planet. It also shows that ending overshoot does not condemn us to low living standards.

• The report explores three future scenarios—one in which overshoot continues to grow, two which bring overshoot to an end at different rates. Ending overshoot means the world will need to shrink its overall Footprint; three possible ways regions might share in this reduction are described, along with some of the challenges each option might entail.

Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report 2006 Backgrounder 3 The THREE SCENARIOS

Business-as-Usual: This scenario is based on UN projections of moderate population and economic growth. It shows that by 2050 we will be using more than twice the resources that the Earth will produce in that year. In this scenario by 2050 the total Footprint of cropland and carbon dioxide increases by 60 per cent, the demand for grazing land and fishing grounds by 85 per cent, and the use of forests by 110 per cent.

Slow-Shift: The slow-shift scenario shows one potential path to end overshoot and even reserve some biocapacity for wild species by the close of the century In this scenario both carbon dioxide emissions and the harvest of wild fish are assumed to halve by 2100, demand on cropland and grazing land would rise at half the rate of population increase, while consumption of forest products would grow by 50 per cent to compensate for the drop in use of fossil fuels. These changes represent just one possible way humanity’s total Footprint could shrink 15 per cent from 2003 to 2001.

Rapid-Reduction: This scenario models a path for ending overshoot by 2050. In this 35 year plan, humanity’s Footprint is 40 per cent smaller in 2100 than it was in 2003. This scenario assumes a 50 per cent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, and a 70 per cent cut by 2100. It also assumes more efficient use of agricultural land. Under this scenario biocapacity increases 30 per cent by 2100, helping to close the gap between demand and supply.

COMMON QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

What are the dangers of living in global overshoot?

We are currently running a global ecological deficit, accumulating wastes and depleting the Earth’s biological capital. This ecological deficit spending can lead to loss of biodiversity and can destroy assets on which our economy depends–for example, depleting groundwater, causing deforestation, collapsing fisheries, and allowing C02 to accumulate in the atmosphere..

How long can we continue to live beyond our means? No one knows for sure. We do know that overshoot is an extremely risky state for global society. The longer we remain in overshoot, the greater the risk of harmful consequences to fisheries, forests and the other natural ecosystems make up humanity's life-support system, and the greater the likelihood that they will not be able to return to former levels of productivity.

How can we end overshoot?

To end global overshoot we must reduce our global Ecological Footprint, increase the biocapacity of the planet, or both.

Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report 2006 Backgrounder 4 We can reduce our Ecological Footprint in three ways:

• Consuming fewer resources per person: There are unlimited ways to do this-for example, by driving less, buying local food, eating less meat, etc. • Increasing the efficiency of our resource use: For example, individuals can use increase the energy efficiency of their homes, and communities can purchase electricity from renewable sources and design cities that encourage walking or use of public transportation. Businesses can manufacture products more efficiently, and that operate using fewer resources., • Decreasing population: Increases in population can be slowed and eventually reversed by supporting families in choosing to have fewer children. Offering women access to better education, economic opportunities, and health care are three proven approaches to achieving this.

We can increase the available biocapacity in two ways:

• Increasing Productive Land Area: The loss of productive land (e.g., desertification, salination of cropland) can be stopped, and previous land losses can sometimes be reversed through reclamation. • Improving bioproductivity: Better management and appropriate use of technology can often increase the yields of productive ecosystems. Care must be taken however to do this in a way that avoids negative impacts on biodiversity, and ensures that the amount of resources used to create biocapacity gains do not result in a net increase in Footprint.

What can individuals do to end overshoot and protect biodiversity?

• Encourage cities and organizations to track their demand on nature. • Reduce your own demand on the planet: ride your bike more, drive less; fly less; eat locally produced foods; eat “lower on the food chain” (ie less meat, especially red meat); insulate your home and hot water systems; use energy efficient appliances and vehicles. • Help increase the planet’s biocapacity: contribute to programs that protect and restore ecosystems, biodiversity, and bioproductive lands.

What can government do?

• Track ecological assets. Maintain ecological resource accounts and consider ecological limits in policy planning to protect our ecological assets. • Support low-Footprint infrastructure, design, urban planning and energy efficient technologies. • Develop Footprint targets and policy action plans to reduce our ecological debt.

Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report 2006 Backgrounder 5