My Ecological Footprint, take 2!

As you may or may not know, I'm not from Bellingham, or even close to here haha It takes about 13 hours by plane and at least one stop in the middle for me to get home, or at least closer to home. That might not sound really eco-friendly, but that's not the purpose here.

You might have noticed that when you took the EF quiz, you could choose your location. Did anyone else than me wonder why there were three to choose from? You get United States, Calgary and Switzerland. Well, obviously for the purpose of the class, I answered United States, as you can see on my first article.

But my curiosity got stimulated, so I took the quiz again by selecting Switzerland. Even if the questions were slightly different since they were adapted to the offering of the place as far as services, food supply etc. goes; I tried to answer them the same way as I did the first time. (the picture is in french, but i guess everybody can compare it to the english version and figure out what each term refers to)

Well, here's the result:

United States: 3.3 planets

Switzerland: 1.9 planets

I wanted to know where these differences come from, so I started by reading the super long and super boring PDF file about how the footprint is calculated. This resulted in about 55 formulas, and 67 explanations, I gave it up.

I decided to contact the footprint network, hoping they would be willing to answer my questions, and they did!

First of all I asked why these three locations were there to choose from. The reason is simply that the Footprint Network has done work with these areas that have allowed them to do the necessary research to produce specific footprint calculations. They also said: '' We are hard at work to expand the locations for which we have footprint calculators. Keep your eyes peeled in the next 2 weeks for many other countries to be added! ''

They also were kind enough to make all those calculations a bit simpler for me and mainly explain the differences between both of my results to me.

Basically, besides your own answers, it considers the 'services' in your country, such as public services, government assistance, roads and infrastructure or the military, which obviously varies between the countires. This makes the 'services' part of the footprint, every citizen is allocated his own part of all these things and this cannot be changed. That's one of the reasons why the footprint can sometimes not be under one planet.

The woman who answered my e-mail also raised some concerns about the fact that besides changing everyones personal footprint, they are trying to influence some higher instances such as the government as well. A large portion of the footprint comes form the way national infrastructures are designed, how goods are produced and how public services operate. '' In order to allow their citizens to achieve a lifestyle that fits within one planet, governments need to dramatically improve the efficiency of the built environment and invest in renewable energy and smart lande-use planning''

I hope we all learned something new! =)

(thanks to Nina Brooks, Finance & Database Associate at the Global Footprint Network)