Abstract
During the last 50 years, humanity’s Ecological Footprint has increased by nearly 190% indicating a growing unbalance in the human-environment relationship, coupled with major environmental and social changes. Our ability to live within the planet’s biological limits requires not only a major re-think in how we produce and distribute ‘things’, but also a shift in consumption activities. Footprint calculators can provide a framing that communicates the extent to which an individual’s daily activities are compatible with our One Planet context. This paper presents the findings from the first international study to assess the value of personal Footprint calculators in guiding individuals towards sustainable consumption choices. It focuses specifically on Global Footprint Network’s personal Footprint calculator, and aims to understand the profile of calculator users and assess the contribution of calculators to increasing individual awareness and encouraging sustainable choices. Our survey of 4245 respondents show that 75% of users resided in 10 countries, 54% were aged 18–34 years and had largely used the calculator within an educational context (62%). The calculator was considered a valuable tool for knowledge generation by 91% of users, and 78% found it useful to motivate action. However, only 23% indicated the calculator provided them with the necessary information to make actual changes to their life and reduce their personal Footprint. The paper discusses how and why this personal Footprint calculator has been effective in enhancing individuals’ understanding of the environmental impact of their actions, framing the scale of the problem and empowering users to understand the impacts of different lifestyle choices. Those individual-level and system-level changes needed to generate global sustainability outcomes are also discussed. Similar to other calculators, a gap is also identified in terms of this calculator facilitating individuals to convert new knowledge into action.
Highlights
Creating sustainable societies and socio-economic systems depends on our capacity to understand and manage human-environment interactions (WCED 1987, Costanza et al 2014, Sterner et al 2019)
We live in a One Planet reality (Ward and Dubos 1972), humans currently demand the equivalent of 1.7 planets worth of resources and ecological services (WWF et al 2018)—with major imbalances across countries (Galli et al 2014, Lin et al 2018)— resulting in a noticeable decline in the world’s biodiversity (Butchart et al 2010, Tittensor et al 2014, Diaz et al 2019) and threatening the well-being of future generations (O’Neill et al 2018) and the planet’s stability (Steffen et al 2015a)
It is not surprising that the second largest proportion of respondents resided in Europe, as this region has historically shown the greatest interest in the Ecological Footprint and its message (Collins and Flynn 2015)
Summary
Creating sustainable societies and socio-economic systems depends on our capacity to understand and manage human-environment interactions (WCED 1987, Costanza et al 2014, Sterner et al 2019). We live in a One Planet reality (Ward and Dubos 1972), humans currently demand the equivalent of 1.7 planets worth of resources and ecological services (WWF et al 2018)—with major imbalances across countries (Galli et al 2014, Lin et al 2018)— resulting in a noticeable decline in the world’s biodiversity (Butchart et al 2010, Tittensor et al 2014, Diaz et al 2019) and threatening the well-being of future generations (O’Neill et al 2018) and the planet’s stability (Steffen et al 2015a) Informed by such studies, work of international bodies (e.g. IPCC 2014, SCBD 2014, Diaz et al 2019), and coupled with pressure from global public movements, policy makers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to revise policy choices and investment decisions, and promote policies to stimulate longterm changes in beliefs, social norms and human behaviours (Kinzig et al 2013). All stakeholders are essential and their actions complement each other, as the issues of sustainability governance and related decision-making processes are investigated by many (e.g. Dietz et al 2003, Magalhães et al 2016, Galli et al 2018, Brown et al 2019, Sterner et al 2019), discussing the role of global policy processes is beyond the scope of this paper, instead it focuses on the ‘other side of the coin’: the role of individuals
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