Shifting focus from individuals to communities

Measuring our impact on the environment from global to individual (Part 2)

In 2004, the term “carbon footprint” was introduced by a British oil and gas company to propel this idea of measuring individual climate impact. This turned the responsibility away from large corporations, such as oil and gas companies, to the individual. This diversion has been picked up worldwide as individuals are told to use fewer plastic straws, plant trees, and eat less meat. All the while, multinational corporations continue to compel people to overconsume. Almost 20 years later, people around the world use the term carbon footprint to understand the carbon emissions associated with the goods and services they consume.

Individualism is one of several tactics to create unproductive conversations and delay climate action. ‘Discourses of climate delay’ categorize different tactics people use to shift conversations onto the negative social impacts of climate policies. There are four camps of ‘discourses of climate delay’ and individualism fits within the camp that redirects responsibility onto others. Individualism ultimately shifts the responsibility onto the individual and consumer and omits large players from the conversation. Carbon footprint calculators being promoted by oil and gas companies are an example of this discourse of climate delay.

Over a decade before the term ‘carbon footprint’ was coined, the concept of measuring natural resources as inputs into the economy was called ‘ecological footprint’. Ecological footprint is defined as a land-based metric, measuring the amount of biologically productive area necessary to sustain a given population in a defined territory.

Dr. William Rees, at the University of British Columbia, created the concept of ecological footprint by adapting ‘carrying capacity’, a concept in ecology to measure the maximum population that can be sustained in a given area, by also accounting for how humans have appropriated the environment. In Rees’ original paper, he measured the ecological footprint of urban areas in British Columbia, showing that they required 20 times as much land as they had to support consumption in that area.

Various academics and scientists have advanced the conceptual framework of ecological footprint innovating the methodology and application. As a complement to ecological footprint, there is also biocapacity, which measures the amount of land available to sustain humanity.

Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, PhD student of Dr. Rees, propelled this concept to use (inter)national data to measure the ecological footprint and biocapacity of countries and the world. In the early 2000s, Dr. Wackernagel founded the Global Footprint Network, a non-profit organization that applies and analyzes ecological footprint and biocapacity data. Then creating the concept of Earth Overshoot Day, the day that humanity has used all the natural resources available within that year.

Similar to the carbon footprint calculators, the Global Footprint Network created an ecological footprint calculator for individuals to find their own personal ecological footprint. Photo 1 shows a screenshot of the web interface for the ecological footprint calculator by the Global Footprint Network. This visually appealing, user-friendly application allows anyone around the world who has access to the internet to calculate their own impact.

Photo 1: Screenshot of the Global Footprint Network's ecological footprint calculator.

Although this calculator is widely accessible, it lacks important information. For instance, the calculator does not ask what country someone is from. This is an important question because countries have different sources of energy, some being much more carbon-intensive than others, which would have a significant impact on the carbon component of the ecological footprint.

Additionally, to design a global calculator that can be answered by people with different lifestyles, choices, and behaviours, the questions become impersonal and sometimes inapplicable. For instance, the calculator asks the user if their house uses electricity but not how the electricity is generated. This calculator has its limitations yet that does not discount the fact that it is a good starting point for people to learn about ecological footprint as an easily and widely accessible digital tool.

Research was done in the Netherlands to test different users’ experiences with various ecological footprint calculators. Categorizing their results into 11 themes, they created recommendations for improving the design of ecological footprint calculators. A few of the recommendations highlight that users want to be able to connect to their broader community.

The authors of this study recommend that calculators should be designed to contextualize the results using relevant real-life concepts, offer opportunities for social comparisons, and allow for easy sharing. Users of ecological footprint calculators want to see how their results relate to their broader communities and be able to share and compare results with people in their community. Although it's possible to apply these recommendations to global calculators, there will be more of an impact on a user’s behaviour if the tools are designed for a specific community.

Researchers at the Ecological Footprint Initiative at York University are advancing applications of ecological footprint calculators by designing them for specific communities. They design the calculator to be tailored to the lifestyle, habits, and needs of that community, which also allows for the questions to be more relatable and easier to answer. Also, the data in the back end of the calculator, behind the calculations, is more specific to the community, which provides more accurate results.

In one project, researchers worked with the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) to create an MNO-specific ecological footprint calculator. Photo 2 shows a screenshot of the web interface for the MNO-specific ecological footprint calculator. Through focus groups and relationship building with members and elders of the MNO, the calculator was designed to ask questions relevant to this community, their culture, and their lifestyle. For instance, most ecological footprint calculators don’t include questions about hunting and growing food, but these questions were asked in this calculator.

Ecological footprint calculators are designed to be taken by individuals, but they are more successful in reflection and inciting behaviour change if the calculators are designed for a specific community. People need to feel that the questions relate and are relevant to their lifestyle. They need to feel that local change is possible within their community and that it matters to them.

Humans are social beings that need to feel connection to others around them. Carbon footprint calculators are designed to focus on the individual consumer shifting focus away from the community and broader society. Ecological footprint calculators can be tools to inspire change if they are designed to emphasize this connection to community rather than focusing responsibility solely on the individual.

Photo 2: Screenshot of the Métis Nation of Ontario focused ecological footprint calculator.

Photo by Grant Durr