Ecological Footprint: William Rees

Summary: Interview with William Rees, the world famous originator of ecological footprint analysis"”a remarkable instrument designed to actually measure the demands that each of us, and each of our societies, is placing on the productive capacity of our planet. The Earth, after all, can only provide so much food and water, and can only absorb a finite amount of waste. If you divide the productive capacity of the Earth by the number of people on the planet, you can estimate the share of the planet's capacity that each human being is entitled to. By extension, footprint analysis can also show how much of the Earth's carrying capacity is actually being taken up by any particular human population. It shows that the consumer societies of the west are taking up far more than their share of the Earth's resources, while the Third World is taking up far less. Rees's book, Our Ecological Footprint, written with his colleague Mathis Wackernagel, has been published in numerous languages around the world. Since 1969, he has been a professor at the University of British Columbia.