Our Ecological Footprint presents an internationally-acclaimed tool for measuring and visualizing the resources required to sustain our households, communities, regions and nations, converting the seemingly complex concepts of carrying capacity, resource-use, waste-disposal and the like into a graphic form that everyone can grasp and use. An excellent handbook for community activists, planners, teachers, students and policy makers.
The only metric that tracks how much nature we have – and how much nature we use Ecological Footprint accounting, first introduced in the 1990s and continuously developed, continues to be the only metric that compares overall human demand on nature with what our planet can renew — its biocapacity — and distils this into one number: how many Earths we use. Our economy is running a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme with the planet. We use future resources to run the present, using more than Earth can replenish. Like any such scheme, this works for a limited time, followed by a crash. Avoiding ecological bankruptcy requires rigorous resource accounting — a challenging task, but doable with the right tools. Ecological Footprint provides a complete introduction, covering: Footprint and biocapacity accounting Data and key findings for nations Worldwide examples including businesses, cities, and countries Strategies for creating regenerative economies Whether you’re a student, business leader, future-oriented city planner, economist, or have an abiding interest in humanity’s future, Footprint and biocapacity are key parameters to be reckoned with and Ecological Footprint is your essential guide. AWARDS SILVER | 2020 Eric Zencey Prize SILVER | 2019 Nautilus Book Awards: Ecology & Environment FINALIST | 2019 Foreword INDIES: Ecology & Environment
"In the present scenario of global climate change, ecological footprint analysis is necessary for the development of more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways of living. This book includes five chapters that explore various aspects of ecological footprint analysis. Chapter One provides a platform that relates and compares principles oriented towards reducing environmental urban impacts through the analysis of urban form and empirical knowledge about the applicability of ecological footprint as a tool for urban planning and design. Chapter Two focuses on the societal need to keep cities livable and sustainable through appropriate waste management. Chapter Three illustrates how city authorities and residents can better understand their rate of dependence upon and impact on the environment at various scales, realize their vulnerability to overseas environmental changes, and suggest local action or policy guidelines that may increase their urban sustainability. Chapter Four explores means for reducing the lifecycle ecological footprint of residential buildings. Finally, Chapter Five includes an ecological footprint analysis of jatropha biodiesel production at low scale"--
This book explores global implications of human activities that trigger changes in climate and the appropriate scientific, adaptive, and sustainable approaches as a proven information tool. It reveals that the ecological, social, and economic dynamics of the changing earth encompasses huge uncertainties coupled with its ability to be linked to other forms of global change. From a scientific perspective, multiple efforts are expedient to integrate the many aspects of global changes. Increases in science and technology have afforded nations the ability to plan for the future by investing in adaptive and mitigative measures to monitor present and future changes. Just as the climatic and ecological impacts of climate change are unequally distributed, so is the adaptive capacity to cope with these impacts in different nations. Considering that wealth, infrastructure, and political stability all contribute to a nation's capacity to anticipate and respond to change. So, global South nations who are disadvantaged in these areas are faced with more inequalities and more unique adaptive strategies. There is need for increased aggregate efforts and interaction between scientists, stakeholders, and policy makers to improve both decision-making and global change in science. Scientists and researchers need to work on expanding the range of polices that are proposed, debated, and implemented. This way, novelty, new ideas and methodologies are infused into the society. At this point of multiple climate footprints, there is an immense need to explore all ideas evaluating their possibilities in presenting alternative futures, developing alternative policies, and adaptive options to solve the intractable ecological footprints of climate change.
Environmental Carbon Footprints: Industrial Case Studies provides a wide range of industrial case-studies, beginning with textiles, energy systems and bio-fuels. Each footprint is associated with background information, scientific consensus and the reason behind its invention, methodological framework, assessment checklist, calculation tool/technique, applications, challenges and limitations. More importantly, applications of each indicator/framework in various industrial sectors and their associated challenges are presented. As case studies are the most flexible of all research designs, this book allows researchers to retain the holistic characteristics of real-life events while investigating empirical events. - Includes case studies from various industries, such as textiles, energy systems and conventional and bio-fuels - Provides the calculation tool/technique, applications, challenges and limitations for determining carbon footprints on an industry by industry basis - Presents the background information, scientific consensus and reason behind each case study
While technology is developing at a fast pace, urban planners and cities are still behind in finding effective ways to use technology to address citizen’s needs. Multiple aspects of sustainable urbanism are brought together in this book, along with advanced technologies and their connections to urban planning and management. It integrates urban studies, smart cities, AI, IoT, remote sensing, and GIS. Highlights include land use planning, spatial planning, and ecosystem-based information to improve economic opportunities. Urban planners and engineers will understand the use of AI in disaster management and the use of GIS in finding suitable landfill sites for sustainable waste management. Features Explains the process of urban heritage conservation, including the process of urban renewal and its regeneration and the role of citizens in urban renewal, planning, and management. Includes several case studies highlighting urban environmental problems and challenges in developed and developing countries and the ways for converting urban areas into smart cities. Focuses on urban resources, the supply of energy in smart cities, and their proper management practices. Introduces the role of remote sensing, GIS, and IoT in making a smart city and meeting sustainable goals. Analyzes unique case studies, their challenges and obstacles, and proposes a set of factors to understanding smart city initiatives and projects.
Indigenous People and Nature: Insights for Social, Ecological, and Technological Sustainability examines today's environmental challenges in light of traditional knowledge, linking insights from geography, population, and environment from a wide range of regions around the globe. Organized in four parts, the book describes the foundations of human geography and its current research challenges, the intersections between environment and cultural diversity, addressing various type of ecosystem services and their interaction with the environment, the impacts of sustainability practices used by indigenous culture on the ecosystem, and conservation ecology and environment management. Using theoretical and applied insights from local communities around the world, this book helps geographers, demographers, environmentalists, economists, sociologists and urban planners tackle today's environmental problems from new perspectives. - Includes in-depth case studies across different geographic spaces - Contains contributions from a range of young to eminent scholars, researchers and policymakers - Highlights new insights from social science, environmental science and sustainable development - Synthesizes research on society, ecology and technology with sustainability, all in a single resource
Through an examination of carbon footprint metaphors, this books demonstrates the ways in which climate change and other ecological issues are culturally and materially constituted through metaphor. The carbon footprint metaphor has achieved a ubiquitous presence in Anglo-North American public contexts since the turn of the millennium, yet this metaphor remains under-examined as a crucial mediator of political responses to the urgent crisis of climate change. Existing books and articles on the carbon footprint typically treat this metaphor as a quantifying metric, with little attention to the shifting mediations and practices of the carbon footprint as a metaphor. This gap echoes a wider gap in understanding metaphors as key figures in mediating more-than-human relations at a time when such relations profoundly matter. As a timely intervention, this book addresses this gap by using insights from environmental humanities and political ecology to discuss carbon footprint metaphors in popular and public texts. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students of environmental humanities, political ecology, environmental communication, and metaphor studies.
The ecological footprint is one of the most prominent tools used to measure environmental sustainability, and its rise in academic and policy debates since the early 1990s has been remarkable. Drawing upon research and examples from around the world, t
Agroecological footprints are a unique and popular concept for sustainable food system. Measuring and keeping a tab on the agroecological footprints of various human activities has gained remarkable interest in the past decade. From a range of human activities, food production and agriculture are most essential as well as extremely dependent on the agroecosystems. It is therefore crucial to understand the interaction of agroecosystem constituents with the extensive agricultural practices. The environmental impact measured in terms of agroecological footprints for a healthy for the sustainable food system. The editors critically examine the status of agroecological footprints and how it can be maintained within sustainable limits. Drawing upon research and examples from around the world, the book is offering an up-to-date account, and insight into how agroecology can be implemented as a solution in the form of eco-friendly practices that would boost up the production, curbs the environmental impacts, improves the bio-capacity, and reduces the agroecological footprints. It further discusses the changing status of the agroecological footprints and the growth of other footprint tools and types, such as land, water, carbon, nitrogen, etc. This book will be of interest to teachers, researchers, government planners, climate change scientists, capacity builders, and policymakers. Also, the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, agroforestry, agroecology, soil science, and environmental sciences. National and international agricultural scientists, policymakers will also find this to be useful to achieve the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’.
