A modified ecological footprint method and its application to Australia

We present a new calculation of Australia's ecological footprint. Modificat ions have been made to the concept as originally proposed, in response to i ts perceived shortcomings: rather than characterising the consumption of th e Australian population in terms of appropriated `bioproduction' at world-a verage productivity, a regional, disturbance-based approach is taken, inclu ding actual Australian land use and emissions data. We consider greenhouse gases other than CO2 and emission sources other than energy use. We re-clas sify land use and introduce a weighting system to describe the degree of la nd disturbance. For our calculations, we employ a single-region, static, pa rtially closed input-output framework. Australia's ecological footprint is determined based on actual land use as well as on land disturbance. We set up National Greenhouse Gas and Ecological Footprint Accounts distinguishing imports, domestic consumption, and exports. We investigate variations of t he ecological footprint with demographic factors such as income, expenditur e, size, and location of households, and draw same policy implications from our results. When determined based on actual land use on all types of land , Australia's ecological footprint is about 13.6 hectares per capita (ha/ca p), which is considerably larger than results obtained in previous studies. After weighting, a land disturbance of 7.2 ha/cap is obtained. The per-cap ita ecological footprint shows a correlation with household expenditure, wh ich can be described by an elasticity eta (E) = 0.64. Furthermore, the per- capita ecological footprint decreases noticeably with household size. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.