Dataset Information

Environmental footprint family to address local to planetary sustainability and deliver on the SDGs.

ABSTRACT: The number of publications on environmental footprint indicators has been growing rapidly, but with limited efforts to integrate different footprints into a coherent framework. Such integration is important for comprehensive understanding of environmental issues, policy formulation and assessment of trade-offs between different environmental concerns. Here, we systematize published footprint studies and define a family of footprints that can be used for the assessment of environmental sustainability. We identify overlaps between different footprints and analyse how they relate to the nine planetary boundaries and visualize the crucial information they provide for local and planetary sustainability. In addition, we assess how the footprint family delivers on measuring progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), considering its ability to quantify environmental pressures along the supply chain and relating them to the water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus and ecosystem services. We argue that the footprint family is a flexible framework where particular members can be included or excluded according to the context or area of concern. Our paper is based upon a recent workshop bringing together global leading experts on existing environmental footprint indicators.

SUBMITTER: Vanham D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6853168 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Environmental footprint family to address local to planetary sustainability and deliver on the SDGs.

Vanham Davy D Leip Adrian A Galli Alessandro A Kastner Thomas T Bruckner Martin M Uwizeye Aimable A van Dijk Kimo K Ercin Ertug E Dalin Carole C Brandão Miguel M Bastianoni Simone S Fang Kai K Leach Allison A Chapagain Ashok A Van der Velde Marijn M Sala Serenella S Pant Rana R Mancini Lucia L Monforti-Ferrario Fabio F Carmona-Garcia Gema G Marques Alexandra A Weiss Franz F Hoekstra Arjen Y AY

The Science of the total environment 20190729

The number of publications on environmental footprint indicators has been growing rapidly, but with limited efforts to integrate different footprints into a coherent framework. Such integration is important for comprehensive understanding of environmental issues, policy formulation and assessment of trade-offs between different environmental concerns. Here, we systematize published footprint studies and define a family of footprints that can be used for the assessment of environmental sustainabi ...[more]

PMID: 31635013

Similar Datasets

Project description:The planetary boundaries (PBs) represent a well-known concept, which helps identify whether production and consumption systems are environmentally sustainable in absolute terms, namely compared to the Earth's ecological limits and carrying capacity. In this study, the impacts of production and consumption of the European Union in 2010 were assessed by means of life cycle assessment (LCA)-based indicators and compared with the PBs. Five different perspectives were adopted for assessing the impacts: a production perspective (EU Domestic Footprint) and four distinct consumption perspectives, resulting from alternative modelling approaches including both top-down (input-output LCA) and bottom-up (process-based LCA). Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results were assessed against LCIA-based PBs, which adapted the PBs framework to the LCIA indicators and metrics of the Environmental Footprint method (EF). Global environmental impacts transgressed several LCIA-based PBs. When assessing the overall environmental impacts of EU consumption compared to the global LCIA-based PBs, impacts of EU consumption related to climate change, particulate matter, land use and mineral resources were close or already transgressed the global boundaries. The EU, with less than 10% of the world population, was close to transgress the global ecological limits. Moreover, when downscaling the global PBs and comparing the impacts per capita for an average EU citizen and a global one, the LCIA-PBs were significantly transgressed in many impact categories. The results are affected by uncertainty mainly due to: (a) the intrinsic uncertainties of the different LCA modelling approaches and indicators; (b) the uncertainties in estimating LCIA-based PBs, due to the difficulties in identifying limits for the Earth's processes and referring them to LCIA metrics. The results may anyway be used to define benchmarks and policy targets to ensure that consumption and production in Europe remains within safe ecological boundaries, as well as to understand the magnitude of the effort needed to reduce the impacts.

Dataset Information

Environmental footprint family to address local to planetary sustainability and deliver on the SDGs.

Publications

Environmental footprint family to address local to planetary sustainability and deliver on the SDGs.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets