Ecological Economics 34 234 115 – 130
AN ALYSIS
Ecological footprints of Benin, Bhutan, Costa R ica and the N etherlands
D .P. van Vuuren , E.M .W. Smeets
N ational Institute of Public H ealth and the En6ironment, PO Box
1
,
3720
BA Biltho6en, T he N etherlands R eceived 5 M ay 1999; received in revised form 7 D ecember 1999; accepted 1 F ebruary 2000
Abstract
The ecological footprint EF has received much attention as a potential indicator for sustainable development over the last years. In this article, the EF concept has been applied to Benin, Bhutan, Costa R ica and the N etherlands in
1980, 1987 and 1994. The results of the assessment are discussed and used to discuss the current potential and limitations of the EF as a sustainable development indicator. The originally defined methodology has been slightly
adapted by the authors, who focus on individual components of the EF land and carbon dioxide emissions and use local yields instead of global averages. Although per capita and total land use differs among the four countries,
available data suggest increasing land use in all four countries while per capita land use decreases. The EF for carbon dioxide emissions increases for all four countries in both per capita and absolute terms. D ifferences in productivity,
aggregation of different resources and multi-functional land use have been shown to be important obstacles in EF application — depending on the assessment objective. H owever, despite the obstacles, the study concludes that the
EF has been successful in providing an interesting basis for discussion on environmental effects of consumption patterns, including those outside the national borders, and on equity concerning resource use. © 2000 Elsevier Science
B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
:
Indicators for sustainable development; Ecological footprint; Land use; Carbon dioxide emissions; International comparison
www.elsevier.comlocateecolecon
1. Introduction
Since the introduction of the concept of sustain- able development to the political agenda, there
has been an ongoing search for methods to sup- port decision-making for this purpose see for
example H ammond et al., 1991; K uik and Ver- bruggen, 1991; Bakkes et al., 1994; World Bank,
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 31-30-274-2046; fax: + 31- 30-274-4435.
E -mail address
:
detlef.van.vuurenrivm.nl D .P. van Vu- uren
0921-800900 - see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 8 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 1 5 5 - 5
1996; U N .CSD , 1996; M oldan and Billharz, 1997. In the last few years, the ecological foot-
print R ees, 1992; Wackernagel and R ees, 1996 has frequently been mentioned as one of the
indicators that could be used in this context. Wackernagel and R ees 1996 defined the ecologi-
cal footprint EF as the total amount of ecologi- cally productive land required to support the
consumption of a given population in a sustain- able way. In the N etherlands, most of the atten-
tion
for the
EF came
originally from
environmental and
educational organisations.
Currently, scientists, policy-makers and politicians are increasingly becoming interested.
1
The central metaphor of the EF is probably the most impor-
tant reason for its popularity: i.e. expression of the impacts of human consumption in terms of a
visible footprint made on the natural carrying capacity; EF refers to the continuing dependency
of human societies on nature in terms of the more obvious dependency of traditional societies on
their available land.
Several organisations have already calculated EF s at different scale levels, ranging from individ-
ual and urban to the global scale see for example Wackernagel et al., 1997; Bicknell et al., 1998;
M ilieudienst Amsterdam, 1998; Wackernagel and R ichardson, 1998. M ost of the EF work is still
rather exploratory. As well as support, the EF has also received criticism from both scientists and
policy-makers in particular U N .CSD , 1996; van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999. At the mo-
ment, explicit work still has to be done on the applicability and usefulness of the EF before it
can be used in more regular state-of-the-environ- ment
or sustainable-development
reporting. M eaningful criteria to judge the applicability of
EF as a sustainable development indicator are, for instance: 1 policy relevance and utility for users,
2 analytical
soundness, 3
measurability Bakkes et al., 1994 and 4 communication to a
broader public. In this article, we will discuss an application of
the EF concept for the N etherlands and Benin, Bhutan and Costa R ica — three developing coun-
tries with whom the N etherlands has a close relationship through development
cooperation see also van Vuuren and de K ruijf, 1998. By
assessing the EF of these totally different but small countries, we will also indicate current
possibilities and limitations of the footprint as indicator for a specific country and for interna-
tional comparison. D ata availability allows the focus on the N etherlands to be more detailed than
on the other three countries. In comparison to many of the earlier footprint applications, the
calculations presented here are more detailed by combining
national and
international data.
M oreover, we examined the way the EF for the four countries changes through time — while the
EF has so far almost always been applied as a static indicator.
The article starts with a short overview of some of the appealing aspects and limitations of the EF
indicator used so far. On the basis of this, we decided to use a slightly adapted methodology —
as will be discussed in the next section. N ext, the results of the four country applications will be
discussed and compared with earlier results of Wackernagel et al. 1997. F inally, we return to
the advantages of the EF and its current limita- tions — as we believe that a balanced and com-
prehensive discussion on this topic is still missing. Can the EF be used for policy-making or to
stimulate debate or are its results always debat- able? The conclusions also discuss the conse-
quences of the adapted definition of the EF used.
2. The ecological footprint concept
