First of all, as an introduction to this writing, make the following reflections: all human beings already know about environmental problems, both globally, in Colombia, regionally, locally and in business, as well as their solution formulas; We cannot continue living in the face of an ecological imbalance, nor as stupidly intelligent men, that is, man cannot continue living with his brutal petulance; Something very important is that human civilization cannot continue to be full of nonsense.
After the previous reflections, we move on to address issues of relevant importance that have not been taken into account for the serious impact that all of humanity is debating regarding biodiversity and climate change.
We address the ecological footprint in the first instance, which is what measures “the surface area necessary to produce the resources consumed by an average citizen of a given community, as well as the area necessary to absorb the waste it generates, regardless of where these areas are located.” The illusion that there is an inexhaustible horn of plenty at the service of our consumption vanishes like smoke when we calculate our footprint.
We have a planet Earth, with approximately a quarter of its productive surface: there are approximately 12.6 billion productive hectares, including marine areas and land. Since people are not the only inhabitants of the planet, we must preserve unchanged at least 10% of this surface for other living beings, which means that we have 11,340 million hectares left available for human beings. If we divide this figure among the inhabitants of the planet, we would see that each person receives a small piece of the productive pie of approximately 1.7 hectares, of which 0.25 hectares would be for agricultural use, 0.6 for meadow, 0.6 for forest and the rest would go to modified terrain (cities, roads, factories…).
The above figures are variables according to human interventions. If we used water, wood, food and, ultimately, the set of goods that those 1.7 hectares can produce sustainably, we could think that we remain within the carrying capacity of the planet.
For this topic, the most reliable calculations of the ecological footprint are those made at the national level, considering all the resources that a nation consumes and the waste it generates. National consumption is calculated by adding imports to national production and subtracting exports. To calculate the average per individual, simply divide the national footprint by the number of inhabitants of the country.
But since this topic is so important to know for all human beings, we consider it necessary to delve a little deeper into it.
First of all, we must decide which community (country, city, region…) we want to study and choose a time period. Next, for that year, we look for how much that population consumes to cover its food, energy, raw materials and land needs. It is about knowing how many crop fields have been needed to produce food, fodder and primary materials; how much pasture provides us with eggs, meat or milk; the forest area necessary to obtain our wood; the maximum space necessary for the fishery products we consume; the built territory occupied by our towns, cities, homes, roads and industries, and, finally, the energy we need, which translates into the forest area necessary to absorb the CO2 released from the burning of fossil fuels. Within this calculation of 12% of the territory is reserved for the conservation of biodiversity.
Since everything does not stop here, we must add all the surfaces and dividing it among the inhabitants of the studied area we obtain the ecological footprint per capita. Once this information is known, we are interested in discovering whether the community studied is sustainable or not; to do so, we must know the productive land it has. If your rate of consumption produces a footprint greater than the available territory, then we have an “ecological deficit”, that is, we consume more land than we have available. This would mean that our consumption would be based on the use of productive lands in other places or that we are transferring pollution to other areas of the planet or to future generations.
When the experts have done the calculations, they have verified that each person exceeds their corresponding productive surface by approximately 30%, with the human footprint being 2.85 hectares/person. However, the “media” often hides large differences in distribution, and the reason why some countries can far exceed their biocapacity is because others do not eat their share of the pie. In what we have researched we found that while the footprint of a Bangladeshi citizen is 0.5 hectares, that of an average American is 9.6 hectares. This means that if all the inhabitants of the Earth consumed like an American, we need at least three planets like the Earth available to milk its energy and material resources.
The above leads us to deduce that since there are not three planets at our disposal, the moment all countries enter the same consumer race, an unprecedented social, economic and ecological crisis would be unleashed.
But as in this writing we have titled that we would also deal with what corresponds to trees, we do so about the significance of this great link in our nature, and let’s say that it serves to capture or remove carbon from the atmosphere, as we can say that it is the only alternative, and to preserve trees we need good soils. The reason is because they are carbon sinks and allow the regeneration of the vegetation layer.
Today in the world we are understanding that it is necessary to plant trees, but of course not all soils are prepared and ready to receive the trees that we want to plant and this activity of wanting to plant trees leads many of us to understand that this brings compensation and one of them in the recovery of the soil. Note: in the next writing we will continue to conclude this important topic.
By: Hernán Maestre Martínez