Source: Ministry for the environment New Zealand

The basic assumption of ecological footprinting is that you and your household take up more space or a larger footprint on the surface of the planet, than just the area your feet or your house fills. All kinds of behaviour and habits affect the space you require to live. Space could be measured in hectares of land required. These hectares would provide food or absorb waste or provide living space to name a few functions. Currently the global average per person is just over 23 ha. There are however only 15 ha available per person, on a renewable basis. You might begin to sense the problem. But let’s get personal, again. The best way to get a clear sense of what footprinting is about is to measure your own.

Before you read further, go to the WWF calculator and answer all the questions as honestly as you can. (Read the word Europe as your country’s name, and convert the pound symbol to your currency).

Go to this link and click on start.

My footprint translated to 2.49 planets, and my carbon footprint was 10.39 tons of carbon generated per year. I’ll touch on the idea of measuring with planets later on, but first I should mention that there are a few calculators like this available. I found many and list seven of them on this page with a nutshell review of each. Some considerations that came up as I compared them were: simplicity of use, applicability to South Africa and just plain fancy wow-ness. The WWF one was the best in general to my quick assessment. If you went through the calculator you should have a sense of the fact that your footprint on the planet is not just affected by your house – size. It is also determined by the food, travel and stuff which make up your lifestyle. All of them have an effect on the planet.

‘Planets’ is a term often used in discussions about ecological footprinting. It refers to planet Earth and emphasises the fact that we have only one planet available to support life as we know it. The footprint method translates all lifestyle impacts into actual two dimensional space required on the planetary surface. Everything we do is dependent on the earth, air, water and fire which the planet provides. Eating meat for example requires the space needed for grazing by cattle, and the various energies utilized in the processing and delivery of the meat into neatly wrapped packages in the supermarket. A meat stall on the roadside in Khayelitsha therefore has much less of an impact on the environment than a pack of steak bought from a supermarket. Meat still needs grazing and slaughtering so the impact of the meat stall is still much higher than just vegetables, but it is much less than the packaged supermarket product. A great introduction that examines the impact of the stuff we use can be found here: The Story of Stuff. The point is, it can all be linked to space which is used up. The amount of space used by each person can then be multiplied by the amount of people on the planet. You are then left with an amount of space used if everyone on the planet lived like you. Once this amount of space exceeds the amount available on the planet, we would need more planets! As I mentioned above the global average usage per person is about 23 hectares, and the available space is only 15 hectares per person.

So if everyone lived like I do, we would need 2.5 planets. We only have one, however. So why are we still able to live?

Well, there are two reasons. The first is that we have not yet depleted our resources completely. We still have time left, but not much. Some believe our oil has begun to run out. The second reason is that not everybody lives like I do. Some, like me, live at a consumption rate of 2.5 planets, or some live at half a planet’s consumption rate and some live at much more, like 14 planets.

In the next article I’ll explore a comparison made between those who consume less and those who consume more, in Cape Town specifically, but also globally. I’d like to conclude now with a request which will inform the next piece: Please go to WWF or any of the other calculators and determine your ecological footprint. Then post it below this article with the comment function. If you like, you can also say a few words about what kind of neighbourhood you live in. The most important is to post your footprint, and to read what you can do to reduce it.

I look forward to your contributions!

The question can be asked on various levels. Let’s think about it at the personal level first. It might be assumed that if you have more money you are able to improve the quality of your life and thereby support your own health better. Reflect back on your life and think about times when money was scarce, or times when you had plenty. How did your health compare to your wealth? When you received a pay increase, did you smoke less and eat healthier? If one has an increase in your income it becomes more affordable to contract medical aid or save for unexpected medical costs. It takes willpower to decide to save your money instead of spending on an appliance, for example. It becomes clear that how you spend your money is more important to the overall quality of your health than how much you have. There is an old saying that you can’t eat money. How you spend it is important for your health. But then the fact can also be recognized that there are more things than money that affect your health, even if you spend it on staying healthy. If your house is next to a factory that blasts out smoke every day your health will be affected. There are many factors beyond our immediate control that impact how healthy we stay. In short, to maintain your health it becomes useful to think about the whole range of relationships you depend on. In addition to your relationship with money your relationship with other people, and with your environment is important.

This question can now be taken from the personal to the organizational level. Mervyn King published a report in 2002 that had significant implications for how companies run their business in South Africa. This report is now known as ‘King II’ (King 2002). Amongst other things it engaged with the same question we are considering. On a corporate level the question was phrased in terms of the financial income and expenditure of a company. Did the value of the company, or the health of the company only rest in financial value? The King II report concluded emphatically that it did not.

King II listed three bottom lines on which companies that wish to be listed on the Johannesburg Stock exchange have to report . It added two areas of value to the traditional financial bottom line. In addition to being financially healthy, companies now have to show that they add value to the natural environment in the areas in which they are active, and the communities in which they are active. A soft drinks manufacturer, for example, would invest in research and development of ways to save water, to reduce the environmental impact of their operations. They could also sponsor an HIV prevention campaign in the communities from which their staff are drawn, and surrounding their factories. This social investment is often referred to as corporate social investment or CSI. The King II report declared that a company or organization is not healthy, or sustainable, unless it adds value to all three areas: financial, social and environmental. This became known as the ‘Triple Bottom Line’. A diagram is often used to describe this argument, where three circles overlap, and the triangle, where all three overlap, is then seen as the anchor of sustainability. See figure 1.

The impact these measures had was massive. Companies employed cadres of social investment and environmental impact mitigation managers. Major developments could not go ahead unless an environmental impact assessment had been completed by the developer, and approved by the government as having a minimal or beneficial impact on the environment. It became harder to perpetrate ruthless development that harms the environment and the communities around the developments. Many NGO’s also began to depend on grants disbursed by the CSI department of major corporations, and social investment became one of the pillars of Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa. (This has since been named Socio – Economic Development compliance.)

As I mentioned I believe this measure moved the corporate governance in South Africa closer to sustainability. It was an important step to get companies to consider the natural environments and the communities their operations impact upon. An unexpected pitfall was however contained in the perspective on sustainability provided by the triple bottom line.

The National Strategic Framework on Sustainable Development (Republic of South Africa: Department of Environment and Tourism 2006) highlighted the fact that there is no economy which does not depend on people. There might be very complex transactions happening over electronic and internet based platforms without the direct involvement of people, but ultimately money is a tool used by people. In the triple bottom line, a segment of the financial aspect is seen as separate from the social and environmental aspects. A diagram that might represent reality better would be one where the economy is a smaller circle, completely contained within the social aspect.

The same argument holds for the fact that our complete social system, in other words all of humanity, presently live on this planet. Regardless of our economic or social activity we are dependent on our natural environment. Once again the social system is dependent on the larger natural environment, as opposed to overlapping it. See figure 2.

It’s useful to view these circles as dimensions of sustainability. When the word ‘sustainability’ is used, you can immediately place it in the broad categorization of these three areas. Each dimension obviously has specific and more detailed aspects, such as the sustainability of a water resource or a forest in the natural dimension, or the sustainability of a family, or organization in the social dimension, or the sustainability of a company’s income in the financial dimension.

Let’s return to the personal. When you think about the future of your household and family, do you invest in the centre, the middle circle or the outer circle of your home? Consider the economic circle in your home. What are the different parts? And the social circle. How sustainable is your family life? Think about the things that reassure you that your family will survive and thrive. There is an important relationship between all three areas, and the sustainability of the whole system depends on this relationship.

I believe that the outer circle is often missed in favour of focus on the inner circle. The effects of this focus are now beginning to show. Water is running out. Food is becoming more expensive. Our oil will soon be either finished or unaffordable.

Enabling sustainable community development means in this case that we slowly begin to shift our focus to a wider view of our investments, to include ourselves, the people around us, and the environment we live in.

To return to the question we started with, whether wealth equates to health: I would contend that a healthy environment, a healthy social life and a healthy economy all interact and contribute to wealth and prosperity which is sustainable and would outlast our current narrow focus on money.

King, M. 2002, King Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa – 2002, Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, Parktown, South Africa.

Republic of South Africa: Department of Environment and Tourism 2006, Strategic Framework for Sustainable Development in SA, First edn, Government Printer, Pretoria.