UNITED KINGDOM
Note: A previous Ecoswitch article on the Ecological debt concept can be read here.
Each year, Global Footprint Network calculates humanity’s Ecological Footprint (its demand on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries), and compares this with global bio capacity, the ability of these ecosystems to generate resources and absorb waste. Ecological Footprint accounting can be used to determine the exact date we, as a global community, begin living beyond the means of what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year. For the Global Footprint Network Website, click here.
While the planet as a whole was ecologically self-sufficient all year round until 1986, the British Isles were deep in the red early on. In 1961 the UK ecological debt day was 9 July, but this year it falls on Easter Sunday according to Andrew Simms and New Economics Foundation (NEF). On a planetary level, last year’s debt day was the 23rd of September…NEF says: ‘National food self-sufficiency is in long term decline, and we are increasingly dependent on imports at precisely the time when the guarantee of the rest of the world ability to provide for us is weakening.’
Making a few pertinent points in an interview with John Vidal the environmental editor of the Guardian, for example on trade; Simms says ours is a very wasteful system of world trade of which certain aspects, it should be painfully obvious, is completely un acceptable. The NEF goes on to claim that:
Virtually identical amounts of gingerbread, fresh boneless chicken, chocolate covered waffles, are imported and exported … In 2007, the UK exported 1.8m tonnes of essential oils, perfumes and toilet preparations, while it imported 1.5m tonnes.*
The UK was also recently, but perhaps not so surprisingly, prophesised to be the worst hit of the large economies. Apparently, the fantasy mortgages in Britain were even more irresponsible (some exceeding the already inflated value of the property). Nature has a budget — it can only produce so many resources and absorb so much waste every year. The problem is our demand for nature’s services is exceeding what it can provide. Studies have shown that we would need 1.4 earths to sustain our current average rate of consumption. A quick, off the top of the head calculation offers the not very encouraging number of 1.75 British Isles to cover what is consumed in the UK. Granted, this is from someone who is neither a mathematician nor an ecologist but it is indication that we are doing something wrong. Or rather, many things are wrong and talk of a perfect storm does not seem far-fetched. Climate change, competition for energy resources, economic instability and changing consumption patterns are all now compromising not only some few countries here and there. We are looking at a very shaky and possibly crumbling global system. The centre does not hold. Or back to Finance for Dummies: A credit card where you each year go into 75% overdraft is very likely to be cancelled. Therefore, we must try to live less beyond our means. It all starts now…
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* Article ‘UK goes into ecological debt on Easter Sunday’ by John VIdal in the Guardian on the 11th of April 2009, read it here.
