What is a carbon footprint?
Carbon footprint and/or ecological footprint
The terms "carbon footprint" and "ecological footprint" designate the same process.
It is about the pressure that humans on the nature to provide for their needs. The footprint is calculated in hectare (ha) and it measures everything that we consume and reject (waste) into nature to meet our needs.
Ex: the water we are using to drink, take a shower or clean; the resources used to produce our food, the area of forest used to produce the wood or the papers that we consume etc.
Therefore, each person has an individual impact on nature according to their lifestyle, demands and needs. It is obvious then that we must consume within the limits of what nature offers us. There must be a limit between what the Earth offers and what humans demand from it.
How is the carbon footprint calculated?
The carbon footprint of each person is the sum of six distinct components:
- Energetic soil: the forest area required to absorb CO² emissions of one person;
- Arable lands the area of arable lands required to grow the products consumed by one person;
- Pasture: the pasture area required to produce the required animal products;
- Forests: the forest area required to produce wood and paper;
- Sea space: the sea area required to produce fish and seafood;
- Built environment: the ground area required to set up housing and infrastructures.
The ecological footprint in Canada
On a worldwide scale, once all the available natural resources are added and divided by the world population, we obtain a carbon footprint of 1.9 hectares to meet the needs of each person.
However, it's not as simple as that because the resources are not the same everywhere and their access is not always guaranteed.
The average Canadian consumes 7.25 hectares of soil and sea. A resident of Quebec consumes slightly less that the average Canadian, 6.89 hectares. This is way over the world average of 2.3 hectares.
The lifestyle of the average Canadian, with a footprint of 7.25 hectares per inhabitant, is therefore clearly non-sustainable, because it requires the consumption of a 382% surplus of the world's bio-capacity available per inhabitant.
This lifestyle ends up imposing an ecological deficit upon other world communities.
A footprint exceeding the Earth's global capacity, indicates that we consume natural resources at a non-sustainable pace. This means that Canadians live on a larger portion of the "interest" on Earth's "capital" (bio-capacity) than do other world citizens living elsewhere.
One of the reasons for Canada's large footprint is attributable to the cold climate and the corresponding energy demands (55% of the carbon footprint), along with consumption levels of other forms of natural capital.
The main factors contributing to the ecological footprint of Canada are energy, food and the consumption of other matter.
Some figures
- World average ecological footprint: 2.3 hectares/pers.
- Canadian average ecological footprint: 7.2 hectares/pers.
- African average ecological footprint: 1.3 hectares/pers.
- Asia-Pacific average ecological footprint: 1.8 hectares/pers.
- 70% of the world population consumes less than 1.9 hectares/pers for human use.
- 30% of the world population (mainly rich countries) uses 90% of the world's ecological capacity.