A Quick Look at Global Ecological Footprint Since 1961
By: Meena Aier
Tags: Earth Day, Data Visualisation, Data Science, Climate Change, Environment

We have been in ecological debt since 1971. As of 2014, our ecological footprint was in excess of 20.6 billion global hectares, while the Earth’s capacity to generate resources to support human activity amounted to just over 12 billion global hectares. In other words, we live in a world where our consumption needs can only be met by a planet that is able to generate nearly the double of Earth’s biological resources.

On the eve of Earth Day, I figured it might be a useful exercise to carry out a quick data exploratory analysis of our consumption patterns, and the Earth’s ability to sustain our ever-increasing needs. Over the past 50 years, global GDP has grown by over 600% to over $80 trillion. This growth has largely been underpinned by an expansionary capitalist system and a world marked by open borders and free trade agreements. This extraordinary period of economic growth has conferred a number of benefits, including a ~40 percentage point reduction in extreme poverty, a 210% growth in per capita incomes, a 20-year increase in life expectancy, and of course, not to mention the countless technological improvements that have significantly enhanced human productivity and in a virtuous cycle, fostered widespread innovation.

Yet, as we are now all too familiar, this remarkable progress has come with its set of costs. In addition to socio-economic implications of structural inequalities (which are significant), human pursuit for growth has inevitably involved some form of environmental exploitation. A richer world is a world of hunger — demanding more food, more gadgets, and more experiences. Regular emissions accounts of course provide an overview of how GDP growth impacts the quality of our environment. Yet, it does not holistically capture how the Earth copes with our changing, expanding consumption patterns.

Enter Ecological Footprint Accounts. Carefully curated and maintained by the Global Footprint Network, these accounts aggregate ecological resources required to support a range of human activities. On the supply side, the Global Footprint Network also estimates total resources generated by the Earth annually. This comprehensive database can be broken down by countries (and cities), and ranges all the way back to 1961. Before I dive into the data, a couple of quick notes about terms and definitions:

Ecological Footprint: A sum of the resources required to support various human activities such as food production (including emissions), building civilizations (cities, roads, etc.), as well as trade. To standardize comparisons across countries, it is expressed as Global Hectares. If you are interested in learning more, I provide links to relevant resources in the endnotes to this post. Biocapacity: Earth’s ability to absorb and repurpose waste from human activities, as well as its potential to support human consumption. Like ecological footprint, biocapacity is expressed in Global Hectares to facilitate cross-country and regional comparisons.

Now that we have these definitions in place, time to take a look at some of the key insights stemming from this dataset.

Human demands have consistently outstripped Earth’s ability to sustain these needs since 1971. We lived in a fairly sustainable world for a very brief period of time (since this dataset started tracking footprint accounts). Over the past five decades, Earth’s ability to generate resources has grown at a much slower pace than human consumption needs. To illustrate, between 1961 and 2014, Earth’s biocapacity grew by 20%, while human ecological footprint exponentially increase by 200%. That is 10x the Earth’s productive capacity to support our needs. A more salient point: we have been in ecological debt since 1971 — and this debt has growth at an exponential pace over the past 40 years.