(184a) “National Footprints – a Significant Resource for Sustainability Decision Tools and Databases”

Industry, in particular the chemical and pharmaceutical companies, has developed and tested a variety of decision tools, e.g., sustainability metrics, total benefit and cost assessment. The extension of the tools to other industries and eventually to academia and government is highly dependent upon simplifying the understanding, standardization and application of the tools. It is also dependent upon availability of relevant data and the means to utilize that data in known sustainability decision tools.

Meanwhile, there is a growing recognition that the protection of natural capital, including its ability to renew or regenerate itself, represents a core aspect of sustainability. Hence reliable measures of the supply of, and human demand upon, natural capital are indispensable for tracking progress, setting targets and driving policies for sustainability.

This paper presents the current method for measuring the societal demand at the national level: the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts (2005 edition). These accounts, maintained by Global Footprint Network (Oakland, California), systematically assess the Ecological Footprint of nations, using over 4000 data points per country and year. After explaining the assumptions and data sources on which the accounts are built, this paper presents how these accounts can be used as consistent, reliable and detailed data sources for augmenting the calculation of Sustainability Metrics while broadening the boundaries of Total Benefit and Cost Assessment. Also presented is how the Ecological Footprint of nations can be used in making site selection choices for manufacturing facilities.