Overview
ssignment is to calculate your personal ecological footprint. Ecological footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature. On the demand side, the ecological footprint measures the ecological assets that a given population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes (including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions. The ecological footprint tracks the use of six categories of productive surface areas: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, forest area, and carbon demand on land. On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s biocapacity represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land). These areas, especially if left unharvested, can also absorb much of the waste we generate, especially our carbon emissions. Both the ecological footprint and biocapacity are expressed in global hectares (gha)—globally comparable, standardized hectares with world average productivity. First, we are each going to calculate our personal ecological footprint: Go to What is Your Ecological Footprint (https://www.footprintcalculator.org/) and click on “Take the First Step” to get started. 1 Answer each question the best that you can. If given the option to “Add Details To Improve Accuracy”, do it! As you answer each question, click on the arrow on the right to continue to the next question. 2 Record your “Earth Overshoot Day” and “# of Earths” results in your notebook. 3 Click on “See Details” or “Result Part 2”. What is your personal ecological footprint in global hectares (gha)? 4 Reflect on the answers you provided to calculate your ecological footprint. Are there any lifestyle changes you would be comfortable making that would reduce your ecological footprint? If so, restart the calculator to see how your changes would affect your ecological footprint. Now we are going to compare our personal ecological footprint with USA's ecological footprint per person: Now that you have calculated your personal ecological footprint, you can go to Ecological Footprint Explorer (https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/) to compare your ecological footprint to the ecological footprint per person of different countries. Life, including human life, competes for space. The biocapacity of a particular surface represents its ability to renew what people demand. Biocapacity is therefore the ecosystems’ capacity to produce biological materials used by people and to absorb waste material generated by humans, under current management schemes and extraction technologies. Biocapacity can change from year to year due to climate, management, and also what portions are considered useful inputs to the human economy. An ecological deficit occurs when the ecological footprint of a population exceeds the biocapacity of the area available to that population. A national ecological deficit means that the nation is importing biocapacity through trade, liquidating national ecological assets or emitting carbon dioxide waste into the atmosphere. An ecological reserve exists when the biocapacity of a region exceeds its population's ecological footprint. Click on the USA on the global map at the Ecological Footprint Explorer (https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/). 1 Does the United States have a biocapacity reserve or a biocapacity deficit? Click on several other countries. List a few examples of countries with a biocapacity reserve and a few countries with a biocapacity deficit. 2 In 2017 in the USA, what was the ecological footprint per person in gha? This is the average ecological footprint per person in the USA. Click on the countries you listed that have a biocapacity reserve, and those with a biocapacity deficit. How does their ecological footprint per person compare to the ecological footprint per person in the USA? The poorest half of the global population are responsible for only around 10% of global emissions yet live overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change – while the richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions. Figure 1 from Oxfam Report 12/2/2015 (https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf?cid=aff_affwd_donate_id78888&awc=5991_1607464657_77171606a1d569be66e55264aee8507b) Assignment Submission Answer the following questions in your discussion: 1 What is your personal “Earth Overshoot Day”? If everybody lived like you, Earth Overshoot Day would be on this day. This means by this date, we would have used as much from nature as Earth can renew in the entire year. 2 If everyone in the world lived like you, how many planet Earths would we need to sustain the global human population? 3 How does your personal ecological footprint compare to the ecological footprint per person in the USA? Include the personal ecological footprint in global hectares (gha) that you calculated for yourself at the What Is Your Ecological Footprint website at the top of this page and the 2017 ecological footprint per person in the USA in global hectares (gha) that you found at the Ecological Footprint Explorer website in your answer. 4 There are things that you can do to lower your ecological footprint through individual action. Read this article (https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/everyday-actions/5-ways-to-build-collective-climate-impact-through-individual-actions/?utm_source=22vvmmembga&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=cy22memb&c_src=MDK22VX&c_src2=22vvmmembga&creative=463314735770&keyword=how+to+help+climate+change&matchtype=b&network=g&device=c&gad=1), choose one action that you would consider implementing in your daily life and explain why