“Reduce your ecological footprint”. “Canadians have an ecological footprint 4 times larger than the average population”, “If the world had the same ecological footprint as Canadians, we would have already emptied the Earth of all its resources”, etc. These sentences are what we could describe as “classics”. Widely used on social networks and by news channels, they evoke a concept: “the ecological footprint”. However, few actually know what this refers to.

Carbon footprint

Before discussing the ecological footprint, I consider it important to talk about the carbon footprint. Being the main component of the ecological footprint, the carbon footprint has a real impact. As its name suggests, the carbon footprint represents the quantity of greenhouse gases produced by a human, a family or even an entire nation. Whether for food, transport and consumption of goods, these actions all lead to the production of greenhouse gases, directly or indirectly. Raising livestock and farming large areas of land, although it seems simple and without impacts, are among the activities producing the most greenhouse gases in Canada. Car use, which is extremely common in Canada, leads to massive production of carbon dioxide, factors that increase the carbon footprint of a family or a nation.   To support these facts, it is possible to rely on various statistics issued each year.

For example, in 2015, 45% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada came from the combustion of fuel for electricity and heat, 28% came from transportation of all kinds and 8% came from agriculture and livestock breeding according to figures from Atlas Climatique.

Ecological footprint

The term “ecological footprint” is used as an indicator that measures the impact of human activity on the environment and therefore on the planet. This term was used for the first time in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, two North American researchers. The term was, however, popularized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) association. Concretely, this index allows us to know the quantities of resources used by humans, which is vital when experts try to determine if we are consuming too much of our resources, which ones are overexploited, the possibilities of a turnaround, when is -that we will have reached the point of no return and above all, which populations are consuming more than they should. As mentioned before, the carbon footprint is an important factor influencing the result of the ecological footprint, but it is also based on the per capita water consumption of a nation, the quantity of waste emitted by the population, the ability to recover waste, etc. 

Although some do not consider this to be a reliable index for comparison across the globe, a large majority of specialists agree on the fact that it does not matter whether it is a country of sub-Saharan Africa, an Asian country, a European nation or a North American population, certain statistics and certain facts do not lie regarding the excessive consumption of water or meat products of certain nations. This is why, as mentioned in the introduction, Canada finds itself, in certain situations, with a consumption of meat or water several times higher than that of Europe and obviously, with a monstrous gap compared to African nations. 

Are there solutions available to Canadians to reduce their ecological footprint, their family’s one and possibly the country’s?