Tamburino, Lucia
- Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE)
Abstract
Clear indicators and evaluation criteria are essential to keep humanity's environmental impact within planetary boundaries. We introduce a new criterion based on two constraints, accounting for both ecological and human sustainability. The ecological constraint is defined through a novel indicator, the eco-balance, grounded on the well known concept of ecological footprint and the new concept of population biodensity. The human sustainability constraint is based on the estimated level of biocapacity consumption needed to achieve an acceptable level of human development. The application of our criterion to world countries shows where technological improvements and changes in consumption patterns are sufficient to reach sustainability, and where actions on population and/or restoring ecological capital are also needed. This highlights synergic patterns going beyond simplistic schemes, such as overconsumption vs. overpopulation or developed vs. developing countries.
Keywords
Sustainability criteria; Population density; Biocapacity; Per capita impact
Published in
Ecological Indicators
2021, volume: 129, article number: 107973
Publisher: ELSEVIER
SLU Authors
Global goals (SDG)
SDG17 Partnerships for the goals
UKÄ Subject classification
Environmental Sciences and Nature Conservation
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107973
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113167