Preface
The Ecological Footprint is a popular sustainability metric that informs human
consumption and can be set against bioproductivity at various scales as a landbased composite indicator. It was introduced by Rees and Wackernagel and, since
the early 1990s, has been developed by members of the Global Footprint Network.
When applied in evidence-based decision-making, the National Footprint Accounts
at the national scale can provide information for policymakers and governments to
establish regulations that ensure sustainability. It is, therefore, crucial that the
Ecological Footprint and biocapacity accounting be recognised as a measure of
human resource consumption (demand) set against natural capital (supply). Governments would do well to adopt it alongside financial accounts to represent natural
capital and its use. Although, as a sustainability metric, the Ecological Footprint is
considered to wholly represent only the environmental dimension as a biophysical
indicator, arguably it can do more than that as a consumption-based indicator. Based
on a time series since 1961, it is possible to track cross-temporal changes of landtype categories (crop land, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, built-up land,
and carbon) of the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity accounting for a specific
annual edition of the accounts. This information conveys whether a country is in
ecological deficit or reserve and what may be contributing to such a national trend.
Although the analysis is often executed at national scale, it is possible to access other
scales. The study area in the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor (‘the corridor’)
of Costa Rica represents a local–regional case that is compared to its national
environmental performance based on the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity.
Farmers in the core corridor were surveyed in the case study using the Footprint
Calculator as a measure of environmental performance on the consumption categories of food, housing, and transportation included in this global Footprint Calculator
to address 15 main questions involved in the assessment. Thus, their resulting
Footprints are discussed here through comparison to the national level as a special
v
The Ecological Footprint is a popular sustainability metric that informs human
consumption and can be set against bioproductivity at various scales as a landbased composite indicator. It was introduced by Rees and Wackernagel and, since
the early 1990s, has been developed by members of the Global Footprint Network.
When applied in evidence-based decision-making, the National Footprint Accounts
at the national scale can provide information for policymakers and governments to
establish regulations that ensure sustainability. It is, therefore, crucial that the
Ecological Footprint and biocapacity accounting be recognised as a measure of
human resource consumption (demand) set against natural capital (supply). Governments would do well to adopt it alongside financial accounts to represent natural
capital and its use. Although, as a sustainability metric, the Ecological Footprint is
considered to wholly represent only the environmental dimension as a biophysical
indicator, arguably it can do more than that as a consumption-based indicator. Based
on a time series since 1961, it is possible to track cross-temporal changes of landtype categories (crop land, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, built-up land,
and carbon) of the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity accounting for a specific
annual edition of the accounts. This information conveys whether a country is in
ecological deficit or reserve and what may be contributing to such a national trend.
Although the analysis is often executed at national scale, it is possible to access other
scales. The study area in the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor (‘the corridor’)
of Costa Rica represents a local–regional case that is compared to its national
environmental performance based on the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity.
Farmers in the core corridor were surveyed in the case study using the Footprint
Calculator as a measure of environmental performance on the consumption categories of food, housing, and transportation included in this global Footprint Calculator
to address 15 main questions involved in the assessment. Thus, their resulting
Footprints are discussed here through comparison to the national level as a special
v