Ecological footprint analysis applied to a sub-national area: the case of the Province of Siena (Italy)

Evaluation and Prediction of Ecological Sustainability in the Upper Reaches of the Yellow River Based on Improved Three-Dimensional Ecological Footprint Model

Ecological footprint is an important method for regional sustainable assessment. Scientific assessment of the ecological sustainability of the upper reaches of the Yellow River is of great significance to the realization of a win-win situation for the ecological environment protection and economic development of the entire Yellow River basin. Based on the improved three-dimensional ecological footprint model, this paper measures and spatially portrays the ecological footprint per capita depth (EF_depth), ecological footprint per capita size (EF_size), and ecological footprint per capita 3D (per capita EF_3D) of the upper Yellow River region from 2011 to 2020. Then, the ecological footprint diversity index (EFDI), integrated land stress index (I_{comprehensive}), ecological stress index (ETI), and ecological coordination coefficient (ECC) are used to evaluate its ecological safety and sustainability. The results of the study indicate that: (1) From 2011 to 2020, the three-dimensional ecological footprint of all provinces and regions in the upper reaches of the Yellow River was in a fluctuating upward trend as a whole, and NMG had the highest growth, from 2.6256 hm²/person to 3.3163 hm²/person, with an average annual growth rate of 2.36%. (2) In the past 10 years, the ETI index of the upper reaches of the Yellow River increased from 2.13 in 2011 to 3.28 in 2020, which is a serious insecurity. The EFDI index fluctuates slightly, but increases year by year. (3) The capital flow occupancy rate of the upper reaches of the Yellow River has been above 86.67%, and fluctuated during the study period, reaching a peak of 88.61% in 2020. (4) In the four periods, the number of land comprehensive pressure states and ecological security pressure states of the provinces and regions in the upper reaches of the Yellow River show a distribution pattern that the northeast region is better than the southwest region. This study is expected to provide scientific reference for land use in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, building the ecological security barrier of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau, and promoting sustainable socio-economic development.

Implication of energy expansion via the interaction of coal, industrialization, and agriculture towards climate goal: dual sustainability analysis

This current study seeks to investigate the policy implication of Turkey's recent energy policies on its sustainable development. This study uses Turkey's country-specific data and series of 1974 to 2018 for effective investigation and justification of the findings of this study with emphasis on both short-run and long-run implications. Three models were fitted to achieve study objectives to accommodate both environmental sustainability and economic impacts. Ecological footprint was considered better measure and used as proxy for the environment related model. In summary, with environment models, the selected series (per capita GDP, industrialization, agriculture, coal as a single energy use, and mixed energy use) except per capita GDP² were found positively and significantly related to ecological footprint in both short run and long run which translates to poor performance of Turkey's environment. Also, using economic growth model, the selected series (industrialization, energy use, and agriculture) were all confirmed positively and significantly related to the economic growth (per capita GDP). Additionally, environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) was established for Turkey's environment and economic performance. Furthermore, using Granger causality as robust check to these findings, a nexus was found among the series confirming the validity of the cointegration (short- and long-run policies) estimations and results. In congruence with literature and hypotheses, the results from cointegration estimation shows that the twin polices may be good to the economic performance but will spark off adverse effect on environment.

Evaluation of urban metabolism assessment methods through SWOT analysis and analytical hierocracy process

The interconnection of urbanization trends and environmental pressures, are due to the rising demand for resource consumption, waste production and greenhouses gas emissions. Taking into consideration the massive reduction of natural resources, the deprivation of the life quality and the climate change, the scientific community indicates the necessity to emphasis and understand the relationship between cities and the environment as a dynamic concept. Consequently, cities are facing the challenge to implement alternative strategies towards more sustainable management of urban resources. This research aims to shed light on the concept of urban metabolism, the methods that are been used to gauge urban metabolism (i.e Emergy Analysis, Material Flow Analysis, Ecological Footprint etc.), as well as the assessment of the proposed methodologies through SWOT analysis and Analytical Hierocracy Process, considering multi-criteria analysis and how those reflect to Circular Economy and European Green Deal Strategy. The results showed that, the existing methodologies needs refreshment to cover the needs for the cities of tomorrow and a new hybrid approach which will include new set of Key Performed Indicators is essential. Furthermore, the results could serve as a beneficial reference point for policy makers, consultants, rural developers as the new hybrid approach can be used to measure and assess the level of metabolism in one area in order to prevent future expansion.

An integrated approach of Ecological Footprint (EF) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in human ecology: A base for planning toward sustainability

Environmental challenges to natural resources have been attributed to human behavior and traditional agricultural production techniques. Natural resource degradation in agriculture has always been a prime concern in agro ecological research and sustainability analysis. There are many techniques for assessing environmental performance; one of which, ecological footprint (EF), assesses human pressure on the environment and natural resources. The main purpose of this study was calculation of ecological indices including biocapacity (BC) and EF of rural areas of Fars province of Iran. The study was accomplished using survey and structured interviews consisting of three main questionnaires in two different steps. Different agricultural stakeholders, including farmers (for the first step) as well as the policymakers, extension managers and authorities (for the second step) were interviewed. Based on multi-stage stratified random sampling, 50 villages and 423 farmers were selected. Face validity and reliability of the questionnaires were assessed by a panel of specialists as well as conducting a pilot study, respectively. The paradigmatic perspectives of agricultural policy makers and managers (22 individuals) were also analyzed using another specific questionnaire by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Findings revealed that most of the studied villages faced a critical environmental condition due to the results of ecological indicator which was calculated in the study. According to the four main components of human ecology (POET model) including Population, Organization, Environment and Technology, village groups that differed in terms of sustainability level also showed significantly differences due to population, social participation, use of green technologies and attitude towards diverse environmental management paradigms. The causal model also revealed that population, green technology, social participation and attitude toward frontier economics, which were in accordance with the elements of human ecology model, were the main factors affecting the ecological index. Finally, AHP results determined the dominant economic perspectives of agricultural authorities. A paradigm shift toward the comprehensive paradigm of eco-development plus consideration of the results of the ecological indicator calculation as the base of agricultural planning at the local level were recommended.

Factors affecting Germany's green development over 1990-2015: a comprehensive environmental analysis

This study was aimed at providing a comprehensive environmental analysis of Germany from 1990 to 2015. First, an ecological footprint analysis of the country was conducted using bio-capacity and ecological footprint data. Second, possible decoupling of the country's economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions was examined using the decoupling factor adopted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Third, the factors affecting aggregated and sector (electricity and heat production) emission changes were identified using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. The empirical findings revealed that Germany experienced a slowly decreasing ecological deficit over the entire period. The decoupling-factor calculations showed absolute decoupling of the country's real GDP and CO₂ emissions. Based on the LMDI calculations, per capita income and population had increasing impacts on aggregated emissions, whereas energy intensity and carbon intensity curbed them substantially. For electricity and heat production, economic activity was the only CO₂-accelerating factor observed in the study period. In addition, the fuel structure effect, pollution effect, and electricity intensity considerably reduced the emissions of electricity and heat production. It, therefore, is possible to conclude that Germany is an impressive example of environmental sustainability for other nations.

Biocapacity optimization in regional planning

Ecological overshoot has been accelerating across the globe. Optimizing biocapacity has become a key to resolve the overshoot of ecological demand in regional sustainable development. However, most literature has focused on reducing ecological footprint but ignores the potential of spatial optimization of biocapacity through regional planning of land use. Here we develop a spatial probability model and present four scenarios for optimizing biocapacity of a river basin in Northwest China. The potential of enhanced biocapacity and its effects on ecological overshoot and water consumption in the region were explored. Two scenarios with no restrictions on croplands and water use reduced the overshoot by 29 to 53%, and another two scenarios which do not allow croplands and water use to increase worsened the overshoot by 11 to 15%. More spatially flexible transition rules of land use led to higher magnitude of change after optimization. However, biocapacity optimization required a large amount of additional water resources, casting considerable pressure on the already water-scarce socio-ecological system. Our results highlight the potential for policy makers to manage/optimize regional land use which addresses ecological overshoot. Investigation on the feasibility of such spatial optimization complies with the forward-looking policies for sustainable development and deserves further attention.

A Comparative Analysis on Assessment of Land Carrying Capacity with Ecological Footprint Analysis and Index System Method

Land carrying capacity (LCC) explains whether the local land resources are effectively used to support economic activities and/or human population. LCC can be evaluated commonly with two approaches, namely ecological footprint analysis (EFA) and the index system method (ISM). EFA is helpful to investigate the effects of different land categories whereas ISM can be used to evaluate the contributions of social, environmental, and economic factors. Here we compared the two LCC-evaluation approaches with data collected from Xiamen City, a typical region where rapid economic growth and urbanization are found in China. The results show that LCC assessments with EFA and ISM not only complement each other but also are mutually supportive. Both assessments suggest that decreases in arable land and increasingly high energy consumption have major negative effects on LCC and threaten sustainable development for Xiamen City. It is important for the local policy makers, planners and designers to reduce ecological deficits by controlling fossil energy consumption, protecting arable land and forest land from converting into other land types, and slowing down the speed of urbanization, and to promote sustainability by controlling rural-to-urban immigration, increasing hazard-free treatment rate of household garbage, and raising energy consumption per unit industrial added value. Although EFA seems more appropriate for estimating LCC for a resource-output or self-sufficient region and ISM is more suitable for a resource-input region, both approaches should be employed when perform LCC assessment in any places around the world.

Green Chemistry Metrics with Special Reference to Green Analytical Chemistry

The concept of green chemistry is widely recognized in chemical laboratories. To properly measure an environmental impact of chemical processes, dedicated assessment tools are required. This paper summarizes the current state of knowledge in the field of development of green chemistry and green analytical chemistry metrics. The diverse methods used for evaluation of the greenness of organic synthesis, such as eco-footprint, E-Factor, EATOS, and Eco-Scale are described. Both the well-established and recently developed green analytical chemistry metrics, including NEMI labeling and analytical Eco-scale, are presented. Additionally, this paper focuses on the possibility of the use of multivariate statistics in evaluation of environmental impact of analytical procedures. All the above metrics are compared and discussed in terms of their advantages and disadvantages. The current needs and future perspectives in green chemistry metrics are also discussed.

Ecological deficit and use of natural capital in Luxembourg from 1995 to 2009

Scarcity of natural resources and productive land is a global issue affecting the provision of goods and services at the country scale. This is particularly true for small regions with highly developed economies such as Luxembourg, which usually balance the chronic unavailability of resources (in particular with regard to fossil fuels) with an increasing demand of imported raw materials, energy and manufactured commodities. Based on historical time-series analysis (from 1995 to 2009), this paper determines the state of natural capital (NC) utilization in Luxembourg and estimates its ecological deficit (ED). Accordingly, solar energy demand (SED) and ecological footprint (EF) for Luxembourg have been initially calculated based on a recently developed country-specific environmentally extended input-output model. Thereafter, these indicators have been compared to the corresponding annual trends of potential NC (estimated using the emergy concept) and biocapacity, respectively. Results show that the trends in ED and in the use of NC in Luxembourg have not increased substantially during the years surveyed. However, the estimates also highlight that the NC of Luxembourg is directly and indirectly overused by a factor higher than 20, while circa 9 additional 'Luxembourg states' would be ideally necessary to satisfy the current land's requirements of the country and thus balance the impact induced by the EF. An in-depth analysis of the methodological advantages and limitations behind our modelling approach has been performed to validate our findings and propose a road map to improve the environmental accounting for NC and biocapacity in Luxembourg.

Scale dependency of biocapacity and the fallacy of unsustainable development

Area-based information obtained from remote sensing and aerial photography is often used in studies on ecological footprint and sustainability, especially in calculating biocapacity. Given the importance of the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP; i.e. the scale dependency of area-based information), a comprehensive understanding of how the changes of biocapacity across scales (i.e. the resolution of data) is pivotal for regional sustainable development. Here, we present case studies on the effect of spatial scales on the biocapacity estimated for two typical river basin and watershed in Northwest China. The analysis demonstrated that the area sizes of major land covers and subsequently biocapacity showed strong signals of scale dependency, with minor land covers in the region shrinking while major land covers expanding when using large-grain (low resolution) data. The relationship between land cover sizes and their change ratio across scales was shown to follow a logarithm function. The biocapacity estimated at 10 × 10 km resolution is 10% lower than the one estimated at 1 × 1 km resolution, casting doubts on many regional and global studies which often rely on coarse scale datasets. Our results not only suggest that fine-scale biocapacity estimates can be extrapolated from coarse-scale ones according to the specific scale-dependent patterns of land covers, but also serve as a reminder that conclusions of regional and global un-sustainability derived from low-resolution datasets could be a fallacy due to the MAUP.

Environmental assessment of a territory: an overview of existing tools and methods

In order to reduce our environmental impact, methods for environmental assessment of human activities are urgently needed. In particular in the case of assessment of land planning scenarios, there is presently no consensual and widely adopted method although it is strongly required by the European Directive (2001/42/EC) on Strategic Environmental Assessment. However, different kinds of tools and methods are available such as human and environmental risk assessment, the ecological footprint, material flow analysis, substance flow analysis, physical input-output table, ecological network analysis, exergy, emergy or life cycle assessment. This review proposes a discussion on these tools and methods specifically applied to territories. After the meaning of territory is clarified, these approaches are presented and analyzed based on "key features" such as formalization, system modeling, inventoried flows, indicators provided and usability. This comparison highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. It also emphasizes that the approach of life cycle assessment could provide a relevant framework for the environmental assessment of territories as it is the only method which can avoid burden shifting between life cycle stages, environmental impacts and territories.

The application of environmental certification to the Province of Siena

The SPIn-Eco project has provided very broad and precise data collection regarding the Province of Siena. These data and their elaborations have also been developed as a basis for the environmental certification of this organization. In this way, the Administration of the Province of Siena (the first Province in Italy) has reached its goal of obtaining better knowledge of the state of the system and of constructing its environmental management system (EMS) according to the environmental aspects directly and indirectly arising from the organization's activities. Indirect aspects are mainly related to the territorial monitoring and planning. Indicators based on the classical pressure-state-response approach, as well as more complex ones based on CO(2) balance, emergy and ecological footprint analyses, have been used to assess the environmental performance of the EMS. This paper presents how this EMS is constructed, as well as the indicators that are used to analyze the system, paying particular attention to sustainability indicators.

Correlations and complementarities in data and methods through Principal Components Analysis (PCA) applied to the results of the SPIn-Eco Project

This paper demonstrates how the results from different methods can be interpreted on the basis of a statistical approach that can help find new hints in the evaluation of sustainability at the territorial level. The SPIn-Eco Project for the Province of Siena (Italy) is an example of an environmental sustainability assessment of an area using methods that are suitable for a large system: Ecological Footprint, Greenhouse Gas Inventory, Extended Exergy Analysis, Emergy Evaluation, and Remote Sensing. The calculation of many indicators, derived from these methods, has prompted us to use a statistical method (Principal Components Analysis, PCA) to understand the degree of similarity/congruence of the indicators (here we have examined 26 of them) and the possibility of recognizing patterns or clusters in the description of the 36 municipalities that compose the Province of Siena. Among the results, unexpectedly, emergy flow and the Ecological Footprint resulted as being completely uncorrelated, apparently due to the importance that the non-renewable part of the emergy holds in the evaluation. The municipalities of the province are considerably spread out over the graphs, even though that of Siena is quite far from the rest along the first dimension. In addition, we were able to distinguish between more homogeneous districts (sets of municipalities), such as Val di Merse and Val d'Orcia, and very diverse ones, such as Val d'Elsa and Val di Chiana.

The greenhouse gas balance of the Province of Siena

There is a profound debate over how to assign greenhouse gas (GHG) responsibilities; therefore, we have decided to follow IPCC guidelines, as they offer the only standardized method. We have identified each type of greenhouse emission and its level of absorption. We have studied the province and its districts and municipalities. We have determined that the energy sector is that with the highest level of emissions, even if the per capita emissions of the Province of Siena are very low. This is caused by a very low level of industrialization and the presence of a local geothermal production of energy. In order to highlight this aspect, we have considered scenarios both with and without geothermal production. Our research was then focused on single districts (groups of homogenous municipalities) and municipalities, where we found great differences among the greenhouse emissions of the areas. We have constructed a map of the greenhouse emissions of the whole province. It has been interesting to note that there are 14 municipalities with net negative emissions, seven with low positive emissions, 12 with medium positive emissions and three with elevated positive emissions. These latter correspond to the main city and to two of the most industrialized municipalities.