California Sustainability Indicators Growing human population, ever-increasing energy and material use, and waste generation characterize our current economic and social systems. Yet ecosystem services that provide materials and absorb waste are limited. Time trends show a widening gap between increasing human demand for these ecosystem services and decreasing ability of nature to support this demand. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 has developed a suite of substantive and informative indicators on economy-environment interactions. Their objective is to facilitate decision-making for the long-term benefit of California.
In addition to the Ecological Footprint, this suite of indicators includes: the Water Footprint, provided by the University of California-Davis; Groundwater Estimates from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), provided by Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology; and Satellite Indicators of Vegetation Condition, Crop Canopy Development and Agricultural Water Use in California, provided by NASA Ames and California State University-Monterey Bay.
This report presents the baseline Ecological Footprint of California using data from 2008, the most recent year complete data sets were available.
What is the Ecological Footprint? The Ecological Footprint is an accounting tool that measures the amount of biologically productive land and sea area required to produce what a population (or an activity) consumes and to absorb its waste, using prevailing technology and management practice. The Ecological Footprint is compared to available biocapacity, the planet's or a region’s biological capacity to provide the products and services people demand.
Biologically productive land and sea includes area that 1) supports human demand for food, fiber, timber and space for infrastructure, and 2) absorbs the emitted waste. Current national accounts, as well as this one for California, only include the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning on the waste side. With better, internationally comparable data sets, additional waste streams could be included. Biologically productive areas include cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds. Deserts, glaciers and the open ocean are not included.
The Ecological Footprint tracks demand for products that come from five distinct area types: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land and forests. Forests provide two distinct services that compete for space: They generate forest products such as timber and firewood, and they provide CO2
The Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity of California ÂŚ March 2013
Page 9 of 49