The Ecological Footprint of Mediterranean cities: Awareness creation and policy implications

Abstract

The Ecological Footprint is an accounting tool that has been used by resource managers and widely communicated to the public over the last 20 years. The National Footprint Accounts (NFA) are a system of national-level Ecological Footprint accounts that can be geographically scaled to derive Footprint values for major consumption categories at the household level for a given region, province, city or urban agglomeration. A number of city Footprint assessments have been undertaken during the last two decades. However, these studies have used different approaches, rendering comparability challenging. Here we present a top-down approach to consistently track the Ecological Footprint of 19 coastal cities in the Mediterranean region. Valletta, Athens, and Genoa are the cities with the highest per capita Ecological Footprint, ranging between 5.3 and 4.8 gha per person; Tirana, Alexandria and Antalya have the lowest Ecological Footprint, ranging between 2.1 and 2.7 gha per capita. Most cities’ Footprints exceed that of their countries with the exception of Thessaloniki, Tel Aviv, Venice, Palermo and Naples. This analysis provides a macro-level indication of the overall resource demands by cities, their drivers and leverage point. The main Footprint drivers are food consumption, transportation and consumption of manufactured goods. Differences among cities’ Ecological Footprint values are most likely driven by socio-economic factors, such as disposable income, infrastructure, and cultural habits. City level Footprint findings can be used to help design sustainability policies and positively reinforce collective public achievements so far.