Stomping or stepping lightly? Local governance and ecological footprints

'The proper role of government in capitalist societies is to represent the interests of the future to the present.'

Of all the tools that can help us get a grip on what is meant by sustainable development, possibly the most substantive and illuminating - if not the single most helpful of all - is the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint is a measurement of ecological sustainability illustrating the reality of living in a world with finite resources. It provides a final figure in land and water (hectares) that is required to support an individual, city, region, country or the entire world population. It also provides a visual picture of the earth's carrying capacity, an important factor in its popularity.

Land (and water) ecosystems provide us with all our resources from minerals for building to food for living. Land also absorbs the waste we produce, both solid and through atmospheric emissions. It provides important life functions without which the human species would not survive. For example, land use activities regulate ecological systems and climate.

With a diminishing amount of land available due to erosion, sea level rise, desertification and an increase in the world's population, land is becoming a very valuable and scarce resource. It is vital that we measure the amount of land we require, compare this with how much is actually available and monitor whether or not we are living within the means of nature. The ultimate test for sustainability is to see if we are living off nature's interest or its capital.

The ability to conjure simple mental images from complex statistics is where the power of the footprint approach lies. Metaphorically, the footprint tells us that we are running a global ecological overdraft: we currently appropriate 1.3 planets worth of resources, and if everyone in the world consumed as much as the average UK citizen then we would need three planets to support ourselves. Technically, it shows that the human economy and the associated flows of materials and energy are the cause of environmental pressures: society's patterns of production and consumption are hastening the depletion of resources and extinction of species.

One planet for citizens, one planet for governance

A person in the UK living an exemplar lifestyle in a sustainable home can, through lifestyle choices, reduce their footprint from this three planet level to two planets. This first planet reduction is the challenge for citizens. Assuming we wish to live within the earth's means, we further need to reduce our two planets down to one. The second planet can be attributed to our shared infrastructure, business transactions, efficiency of production processes and waste management practices. This second planet cannot be reduced by any individual alone, but represents the challenge of our collective responsibility towards creating a one planet lifestyles.

This second planet challenge implies that there is a need for government at all levels to be seen as leaders in reducing the collective burden upon the earth. They can achieve this by planning for sustainable communities, initiating renewable energy schemes and waste minimisation programmes, prioritising regional planning, improving resource efficiency, creating integrated transport initiatives, making public procurement sustainable and facilitating the provision of locally sourced organic food. At a national level they also have extensive regulatory, budgetary and fiscal measures at their disposal.

If we are to get to grips with the challenge of sustainable development then the footprint concept can help us think about the big picture, while also giving us the tools to do something about it. It is not just WWF that thinks this. The Welsh Assembly Government is the first administration in the world to use the footprint as a headline indicator and in doing so has thrown down the gauntlet to all other levels of governance to do the same: others are now following their lead.

A new study is underway to calculate the footprint of all devolved countries and UK regional development areas. Ecological Budget UK will have produced a complete set of UK footprint accounts within a couple of years. It is not just regions that are getting in on the act: a number of visionary local authorities have also seen the power of the footprint approach in measuring, communicating and planning for sustainable development. These include Oxfordshire, Liverpool, York, Isle of Wight, Cardiff and Gwynedd. All these authorities are pioneers of an approach that sooner, rather than later, many more local authorities will be a part of. The following case study looks at the work of one of these pioneers in more detail.

Cardiff's ecological footprint

Equitable global resource use and sustainable consumption and production can be very difficult agendas to pursue at the local government level. Cardiff Council intends to use the ecological footprint to look holistically at the challenges the city faces, putting Cardiff's impacts into a global context for politicians, officers and the general public.

The council committed to measure the city's ecological footprint in the local sustainability strategy in 2000. In order to deliver on this it has entered a partnership with WWF Cymru, Cardiff University and Stockholm Environment Institute, among others, to calculate the city's footprint by September 2004 and develop sustainable scenarios based upon is findings. This is mainly being funded through a BiffAward grant.

The footprint study will be the first time that the council has looked in detail at natural resource flows in and out of the city. Calculation of the ecological footprint will provide an opportunity to put existing data into a logical context, and provide new data to inform the council's decision making on sustainable development. Once the footprint is measured, officers and academics will work together to develop credible sustainable scenarios answering the questions 'What would happen to the footprint if we met current policy targets?' and 'How far do we need to go to become sustainable?' In addition to the city footprint, the council's own sustainability performance will be brought into context by calculating the organisation's own footprint.

It is inevitable that the project will have messages, information and targets that are relevant across a wide range of council departments. The hope is that the results of the footprint will inform debate and policy within the council on climate change, energy management, tourism, waste, transport, minerals, economic development, food, environmental protection, spatial planning, event management and procurement. The data will help the council to set policy and targets to reduce the footprint over a long time scale - at least until 2030.

It has been important to fully mainstream the footprint concept, moving it out of the 'environmental ghetto'. Cabinet reporting and briefings of the council's corporate sustainability advocates have helped in this process. Initial signs are good: officers throughout the council are focused on the end use of the footprint study to inform policy and large developments within the city.

Communication and education are also important aims of the project and the ecological footprint provides a resonant metaphor. It will be used to support an existing sustainability awareness programme for the public linking local action in the home and communities with global sustainability. The footprint also provides a corporate flagship project to promote sustainable development to council politicians and departments.

Cardiff believes that footprinting has a lot of relevance to the modernisation agenda. The city's footprint has been included as one of the quality of life indicators in Cardiff's community strategy, providing global and futurity messages to local partnerships. The authority's footprint will link natural resource use into the corporate performance management agenda of the council. However, ensuring that big messages are not lost in the minutiae of measurement and methodology is important. It is not just the footprint measure that makes this project so exciting, but its potential application, and the powerful and resonant messages it should provide to all stakeholders within the city.

How we can use ecological footprinting

• as an indicator to show trends over time
• to compare countries, regions, organisations or individuals
• as a platform for organising sustainable development information
• for the strategic management of sustainable development
• for visioning, awareness and as an educational tool
• to inform statutory and non-statutory local authority policy making.

For more information on the WWF-UK ecological footprint programme contact Jo Tallon, jtallon@wwf.org.uk

Stuart Bond is the Sustainable Development Officer for WWF Cymru and has pioneered the ecological footprint approach within Wales, working with the Welsh Assembly Government, and is now extending this approach through the Ecological Budget UK project, sbond@wwf.org.uk

Dr Alan Netherwood is Cardiff Council's Sustainable Development Coordinator. He is on secondment to the BRASS Research Centre at Cardiff University (Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society) to work on the Wales Footprint project, anetherwood@cardiff.gov.uk

This article was published in August's version of eg magazine.