104
6 Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints …
Fig. 6.3 The environmental sustainability ratios of land use for 28 nations
lowest ESRs, with a value of 0.15 and 0.18, respectively. The rest of the 28 countries constitute the top-four list, whose land requirements for self-sufficiency under
current bioproductivity are much higher than the available resources, with notable
ESRs ranging from 2.29 for South Korea to 2.77 for The Netherlands.
As a whole, the geographical distribution of national ESRs for land use follows a
pattern somewhat similar to that for water use. Likewise, the driving forces behind
unsustainable land use are complex, including not only the mismatch between regionspecific population and land supply, which leads to environmental consequences
local-to-regional in scale and which in aggregate may be of national significance,
but also the displacement of land use to other countries through international trade
(Meyfroidt et al. 2013; Weinzettel et al. 2013). In this sense, the land footprint and
boundary measured in this chapter are informative for policy makers who seek to
evaluate national performance on land use in a comparative sense. This valuable
information is likely to get lost if replaced by the simplistic metrics representing the
percentage of land use converted to cropland, as is done by Rockström et al. or the
percentage of forest land area, as is done by Steffen et al.
6.4 Discussion
The analysis carried out provides a preliminary assessment of environmental sustainability for 28 countries. Our findings highlight the national-level heterogeneity of
both anthropogenic interference and capacity thresholds for carbon emissions, water
use, and land use. Although the determinants of the sustainability gaps associated
with the three environmental issues are definitely complex and may vary across
6 Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints …
Fig. 6.3 The environmental sustainability ratios of land use for 28 nations
lowest ESRs, with a value of 0.15 and 0.18, respectively. The rest of the 28 countries constitute the top-four list, whose land requirements for self-sufficiency under
current bioproductivity are much higher than the available resources, with notable
ESRs ranging from 2.29 for South Korea to 2.77 for The Netherlands.
As a whole, the geographical distribution of national ESRs for land use follows a
pattern somewhat similar to that for water use. Likewise, the driving forces behind
unsustainable land use are complex, including not only the mismatch between regionspecific population and land supply, which leads to environmental consequences
local-to-regional in scale and which in aggregate may be of national significance,
but also the displacement of land use to other countries through international trade
(Meyfroidt et al. 2013; Weinzettel et al. 2013). In this sense, the land footprint and
boundary measured in this chapter are informative for policy makers who seek to
evaluate national performance on land use in a comparative sense. This valuable
information is likely to get lost if replaced by the simplistic metrics representing the
percentage of land use converted to cropland, as is done by Rockström et al. or the
percentage of forest land area, as is done by Steffen et al.
6.4 Discussion
The analysis carried out provides a preliminary assessment of environmental sustainability for 28 countries. Our findings highlight the national-level heterogeneity of
both anthropogenic interference and capacity thresholds for carbon emissions, water
use, and land use. Although the determinants of the sustainability gaps associated
with the three environmental issues are definitely complex and may vary across