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Ecological and Carbon Footprints—The Future for City Sustainability

Article · December 2017

DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10175-7

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 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability
Grace Kam Chun Ding and Saeed Banihashemi, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia
Ó 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Sustainable development is generally associated with the definition stated in the Brundtland Commission’s report “Our common
future” as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs (WECD, 1987). It has also been stated by Jabareen (2008, p. 184) as “a strategy of development that results in the
enhancement of human quality of life and the simultaneous minimisation of negative environmental impacts.” Therefore, the
strategy of achieving the goals of sustainable development is to maintain the quality of life as well as take the needs of future
generations into consideration (Müller et al., 2011). However, the rapid growth of global population has placed an immense stress
on the demand of natural resources and contributes to the destruction of the natural environment.
Population growth has contributed to urbanization in cities around the world. This dramatic shift to urban living has over-
whelmed the environmental health of our planet in both over exploitation of natural resources and polluting of the environment
through the generation of emissions. This situation has also been escalated due to the significant economic growth over the last
century with increasing demand for the production and consumption of goods and services for raising our living standards
(Mancini et al., 2016).
In this development, rapid depletion of natural resources and global warming issues has exacerbated the situation and sparked
off considerable debate over the mitigation of unsustainable practices of different sectors in the economy. The impact of economic
activities on the environment has attracted significant attention since the 1990s but still a great deal of constructive actions is
required to alleviate the detrimental effects of cities (Haapio and Viitaniemi, 2008). Extensive research reveals that among the
myriad of economic activities, urban development consumes 60% of the raw materials obtained from the Earth. Of this, the
building sector consumes 40% (Bribian et al., 2011). Cities contribute the largest proportion of the world’s total GHG emissions
(Asseaf et al., 2007). This is more than it needs to be. Yudelson (2008) suggests that well-designed sustainable dwellings compared
with conventional ones on average consume 30% less water and save up to 55% energy.
During the last decade, a plethora of policies and standards were introduced by governments and researchers aiming at reducing
the ecological impact of cities. The signing of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997 was an international breakthrough in the battle
to stabilizing GHG in the atmosphere. The Kyoto Protocol aims to exert the objectives of United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to resolve the problem of global warming by reducing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere
(Oberthu and Ott, 1999). Cities have large impacts and if these impacts are not curbed, global warming will pose a huge and
immediate challenge for the policy makers to act before it is too late. This article begins with a discussion on the meaning
and importance of footprints followed by an overview of the use of the concepts of ecological and carbon footprints and the
methodological framework in the assessment process, and their application in cities. The article ends by demonstrating the process
using case studies.

What Are Footprints?

As the planet is now consuming natural resources in the production of goods and services faster than the environment can
regenerate, strategies are urgently required to manage the ecological assets in a more effective way. The planet has biophysical limits
on natural resources production and waste absorption (Mancini et al., 2016). Cities have significant impact on the consumption of
natural resources. Therefore, we need indicators to demonstrate the current carrying capacity of the Earth so that decision makers are
better informed to set goals, establish options for actions, and monitor progress regarding stated goals. Footprint is a quantitative
measurement of natural resources and it is used to assess the extent of human activities impact on global sustainability (Cucek et al.,
2012).
In assessing environmental sustainability, attention has been directed toward a group of indicators usually termed the “footprint
family” (Ewing et al., 2012; Galli et al., 2012). The footprint family includes the ecological and carbon footprints and they are
considered “consumer-based approaches” to assess how much has been used and how much is remaining (Galli et al., 2012). These
approaches are used to supplement traditional analyses of human demand by linking the perspectives of user and producer
(Beynon and Munday, 2008; Galli et al., 2012). These footprints present a quantifiable and rational platform and on which
discussions can be established to enhance efficiency of production processes, set limit for the consumption of resources, balance
distribution of the world’s natural resources, and address the sustainability in the use of natural assets (Cucek et al., 2012). They
provide an important framework to evaluate the actual material flow and are useful to the assessment of environmental
performance of individual, organization, and even to city scales.
In summary, ecological footprint is an accounting metric that identifies resource consumption and waste generation in the
biosphere in terms of the regenerative capacity of the Earth, usually expressed in global hectares (gha). Carbon footprint is an
account of GHG produced to support, directly and indirectly human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon
dioxide (CO2). Carbon footprint is also one of the assessment components in the ecological footprint framework, but the content

Encyclopedia of Sustainable Technologies, Volume 2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10175-7 43

44 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability

carbon footprint calculation in ecological footprint is quite different and it is measured as carbon uptake land but not the
atmospheric emission due to anthropogenic practices.

Concept and Methodological Framework

Ecological Footprint
Ecological footprint is a measurement of resource flows and emission absorption. It is measured in gha as the amount of
bioproductive space for a designed population. It is designed to measure how human activities and demands impact on the capacity
of the natural environment to regenerate. Hectares of land and water are normalized to calculate the world’s average production of
all productive land and water in a given year.
It is a tool that has been designed to assess human demands on the planet’s renewable resources and the waste generated
from human activities. Nonrenewable resources are not assessed as their use is not sustainable. Ecological footprint was initially
developed by Wackernagel and Rees in 1992 (Wackernagel and Rees, 1998; Cucek et al., 2012), and is now widely used as an
indicator for environmental sustainability. Alvarenga et al. (2012) describe ecological footprint as a methodology that inputs
and outputs from an economic system or human population can be converted into an area of productive land or water. Thus,
this approach reflects the area required to ensure the survival of humankind in conjunction with the generation of waste
(Wackernagel and Rees, 1998).
Ecological footprint is usually measured for a nation in relation to population size and its resource consumption. However the
principle of ecological footprint can also be applied to individuals, industries, organizations, and specific types of consumption
(Ferng, 2001; Wiedmann et al., 2006). Ecological footprint compares actual use of renewable resources relative to what is annually
renewed. Nonrenewable resources as well as economic and social aspects are excluded from the measurement. Ecological footprint
accounts for two sustainability principles (Daly, 1990; Mancini et al., 2016):
l The Earth’s regenerative capacitydthat is, natural resources cannot be consumed faster than their regeneration rates.
l The Earth’s assimilative capacitydthat is, waste emission rates should not exceed the natural assimilative capacity.
The ecological footprint framework accounts for six different land types in the calculation (GFN, 2014; Mancini et al., 2016):
l Croplanddthe amount of land necessary to grow all crops consumed by humans and livestock.
l Grazing landdthe amount of grazing land to feed livestock and the embodied demand for grazing land in traded goods.
l Fishing grounddthe fisheries’ demands on aquatic ecosystems required to sustainably support a country’s catch.
l Forest landdthe forest area needed to supply wood for fuel, timber, and pulp to produce wood-based produces.
l Carbon uptake landdthe area of forest land required to uptake anthropogenic CO2 emission.
l Built-up landdthe bioproductive land that has been physically occupied by human activities that includes infrastructure areas
for housing and transportation, and hydroelectric area for the areas flooded by dams.
The biocapacity calculation in ecological footprint is important and it refers to the amount of biologically productive of the five
major land uses within the boundaries of a given country. Therefore, ecological footprint measures the biocapacity of the ecosystem
available per capita and the assimilative capacity to absorb the waste it generates as part of the carbon uptake land. The ecological
footprint calculation also requires scaling factors in terms of yield factors (YFs) and equivalence factors (EQFs) to convert a specific
land type from physical hectares into gha. The conversion process thus allows comparisons between various types of bioproductive
land and water of various countries in the ecological footprint calculation (Mancini et al., 2016). YFs capture the difference between
national and world-average productivity within a given land use category, while EQFs weight different land use types based on their
inherent capacity to produce useful biological resource for humans in relation to the global average productivity across all land use
types (Mancini et al., 2016). Table 1 presents the 10 biggest and smallest ecological footprint countries in the world according to the
GFN (Agency, 2016):

Table 1 The 10 biggest and smallest ecological footprint countries in the world in 2016

Ten biggest ecological footprint countries Ten smallest ecological footprint countries
Ranking Country Ecological footprint per capita (gha) Ranking Country Ecological footprint per capita (gha)

1 Luxembourg 15.8 141 Mozambique 0.9

2 Australia 9.3 142 Congo 0.8
3 United States 8.2 143 Malawi 0.8
4 Canada 8.2 144 Burundi 0.8
5 Singapore 8 145 Pakistan 0.8
6 Trinidad and Tobago 7.9 146 Afghanistan 0.8
7 Oman 7.5 147 Bangladesh 0.7
8 Belgium 7.4 148 Haiti 0.6
9 Sweden 7.3 149 Timor-Leste 0.5
10 Estonia 6.9 150 Eritrea 0.4

Agency, T. (2016). Global footprint network–ecological wealth of nations. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/ecological_footprint_nations/ecological_per_capita.html.

 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability 45

Table 1 presents the 10 biggest and 10 smallest ecological footprint countries in the world (Agency, 2016). Luxembourg has the
biggest ecological footprint which is approximately 40 times more than the smallest footprint in Eritrea. The world ecological
footprint is 2.8 gha, while the current available biocapacity per person in the world is 1.7 gha. That means people in Luxembourg
are demanding approximately nine times the resources and wastes that the planet can regenerate and absorb in the atmosphere and
followed by five times in both Australia and the United State.

Carbon Footprint
Linking a certain volume of GHG emissions to a specific activity, product or population lays a foundation to describe the
term “carbon footprint” which has become a buzzword in the ecological studies and one of the most important environmental
protection indicators (Cucek et al., 2012). The term carbon footprint was used to refer to the global warming potential (GWP)
and was first defined by Høgevold (2003, cited in Cucek et al.,2012) that relates the amount of carbon in the atmosphere
contributing to global warming and climate change.
Carbon footprint often refers to the measurement of the total amount of GHG emissions that are directly and indirectly caused
by activities of individuals, organizations, or nations (Cheng et al., 2011; Galli et al., 2012). According to the UNFCCC GHG
emissions comprise six types of gases, namely carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons
(HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) (United Nations, 2014; Galli et al., 2012). CO2, CH4, and N2O
are the main GHG emissions account for more than 97% of the total GWP (Nadoushani and Akbarnezhad, 2015).
Carbon footprint is not expressed in terms of area though it has “footprint” in its name. The total amount of GHG is simply
measured in mass units (e.g., kg, tonnage) and no conversion to an area unit is required (Galli et al., 2012). When CO2 is calculated,
the unit kg CO2 is used for CO2 only. If other GHGs are calculated the unit is kg CO2 -e, expressing the mass of CO2-equivalents. The
calculation is obtained by multiplying the actual mass of a gas with the GWP factor. Therefore, the computed results can enable the
global warming effects of different GHGs to be compared and added.
The term carbon footprint is often confused with the carbon footprint measured in the framework of the ecological footprint. In the
ecological footprint framework carbon footprint measures the CO2 emission from fossil fuel combustions that includes both local and
international land, marine and aviation transport (Borucke et al., 2013). The carbon footprint in ecological footprint measures the
amount of bioproductive forest land required to sequester anthropogenic CO2 emissions, at world-average sequestration rate, to avoid
CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere. This is different from the carbon footprint used to assess the amount of anthropogenic GHG
emissions in tons of CO2-equivalent (tCO2 -e) (Mancini et al., 2016).
In the literature, multiple definitions have been offered for the carbon footprint concept in which a common ground can be identified
where all of these descriptions aim to relate to the human activity to release GHGs (Peters, 2010). However, the lack of consensus in the
metrics and methods used and life cycle perspectives have overshadowed the commonality among the definitions. In short, for some
definitions, a robust assessment of life cycle is required, whereas others take primarily CO2 emissions into account.
Mostly, carbon footprint has been considered almost equivalent to the GHGs emitted through a specific process (Shine et al.,
2005). However, encompassing “all” GHGs in the assessment tends to be ambiguous because the analysis of exact effects of
some GHGs on climate change and global warming is still largely unknown, especially on the city scale. As a result, it is debatable
what should be included and/or excluded in the carbon footprint framework. Deciding on the officially controlled GHGs like the six
gases mentioned earlier imposes a barrier to the inclusion of other different GHGs. It reinforces the scope, but on the other hand, it
requires data that should be accurate and available for all cases to ensure comparability but that may not always be the case
(Wiedmann and Minx, 2008).
A definition was proposed by Wiedmann and Minx (2008) in which the life cycle approach was considered to address the undefined
boundaries of GHG. They contended that carbon footprint should refer exclusively to CO2 measurement. This is consistent with
definitions used by Strutt et al. (2008) and Trust (2015) and seems reasonable as the carbon footprint is literally a carbon-based metric.
Taking this critical standpoint, they suggest that further consideration of GHGs emission should fall to a broader class of climate footprint
(Hammond, 2007; Wiedmann and Minx, 2008).
In the quantification of carbon footprint, standardization is necessary to provide guidance for users. In 2007 the Carbon Trust in
collaboration with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK, initiated and developed the Publicly Available
Specification (PAS). The PAS aims at standardizing the assessment details and procedures of the life cycle GHG emissions of goods
and services (BSI, 2011). PAS 2050 is built upon the life cycle assessment (LCA) guidelines and requirement articulated in the ISO
14040 and 14044:2006 by adopting a life cycle approach to GHG emissions assessment (Sinden, 2009; BSI, 2011). This methodology
accounts for emissions of all GHGs and most importantly CO2, N2O, and CH4. Furthermore, the PAS also deals with other relevant
methods and approaches in the field of GHG assessment such as ISO 14064.
According to Weidema et al. (2008), carbon footprint is not a new topic since it is related to the quantification of life cycle impact
indicators for the midpoint category that include ozone depletion potential, GWP, and photochemical ozone creation potentials. In
fact, carbon footprint’s opponents think this tool is just a subset of the data covered by a more complete LCA. SETAC (2008)
indicates that the use of carbon footprints questions the aptitude of the existing ISO standards to address environmental impacts,
because GHG emissions from products are expressed in a consistent and comprehensive way. Even with these criticisms, there
are undeniable links between LCA and carbon footprint in assessing impacts due to global warming (Weidema et al., 2008;
Galli et al., 2012).
46 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability

Table 2 The 20 largest carbon footprint countries by CO2 emissions in the world in 2013 (per capita)

Ranking Country CO2 emissions per capita (t) Ranking Country CO2 emissions per capita (t)

1 Qatar 40.5 11 United States 16.4

2 Trinidad and Tobago 34.5 12 Australia 16.3
3 Curacao 34.2 13 North America 16.1
4 Kuwait 27.3 14 Oman 15.7
5 Bahrain 23.7 15 Gibraltar 15.5
6 Sint Maarten 20.8 16 Kazakhstan 15.4
7 Brunei Darussalam 18.9 17 Estonia 15.1
8 United Arab Emirates 18.7 18 New Caledonia 14.7
9 Luxembourg 18.7 19 Mongolia 14.5
10 Saudi Arabia 17.9 20 Canada 13.5

The World Bank. (2016). CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) database. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC.

Carbon footprint is often applied to assess environmental performance of individuals, organizations, buildings, and even cities.
When applied to a building, the calculation of carbon footprint can help assess primary energy use and the CO2 equivalent emission
of a building so that environmental impacts of material and other building configurations can be improved to minimize impacts
(Airaksinen and Matilainen, 2011; Bendewald and Zhai, 2013). When applied to a city, the carbon footprint relates to consumption
of goods and services by households, governments, capital investment, etc. Galli et al. (2012) indicate that the carbon footprint of
a city is the sum of all emissions related to the city’s consumption, including imports and excluding exports.
Table 2 presents the 20 largest carbon footprint countries by CO2 emissions per capita in the world in 2013 (The World Bank,
2016). According to the World Bank data (2016) in 2013, the world emitted 35.8 billion tons of CO2, an increase of approximately
60% from 1990. China has generated the highest CO2 emissions (10.2 billion tons), equivalent to approximately 28% of the
world’s CO2 emissions followed by 15% of the United States (5.2 billion tons). However when CO2 emission was presented
per capita, Qatar has emitted 40.5 tons of CO2 equivalent per person which was approximately 2.5 times and 5.4 times more
than the United States and China, respectively. The CO2 emissions per capita from developing countries such as Niger and Ethiopia
have generally generated less than 1% which was much lower than the top 20 countries presented in Table 2.

Calculation Methods
Ecological Footprint
Different methods have been developed to estimate the ecological footprint (Wackernagel et al., 1999). Ecological footprint
measures global biocapacity across the five major land uses of a given country as discussed in “Ecological Footprint” section. A
country’s consumption is calculated on the total net national production by subtracting total national exports from total national
imports. The ecological footprint will therefore reveal an ecological reserve if ecological footprint is smaller than its biocapacity or
otherwise ecological deficit. Ecological footprint can be calculated using the following formula (Borucke et al., 2013):
X Pi
EF ¼  YFN;i  EQFi
i
YN;i

where EF is ecological footprint of a country; P is the amount of each primary product i that is extracted from the Earth; YN,i is the
product specific yield i for country N; YFN,i is the specific yield factor for land type i for country N; and EQFi is the specific
equivalence factor for land type i. Both YF and EQF are important in the calculation of ecological footprint. YF is a ratio of national
average to world average yields and represents specific productivity level for specific land use types. It is country-specific and may
vary by land use type and year. EQF is used to convert different land use types into equivalent areas relative to the world productivity
of all lands. Similar EQF may vary by land use type and year.
The calculation of ecological footprint is complex and requires comprehensive data collection from various sources such as database
of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations for biomass-based products, United Nations Commodity Trade
Statistics Database for commodities, International Energy Agency (IEA) for CO2 emissions for fossil fuel combustion, Carbon Dioxide
Information Analysis Centre database for countries not included in the IEA database, and international aviation and marine bunker fuels
from IEA database.
Estimating ecological footprint is using an input–output framework approach (Bicknell et al., 1998; Ferng, 2001; Wiedmann
et al., 2006). Input–output analysis utilizes standard input–output tables which consist a series of rows and columns of data to
record the flow of goods and services across key sectors of an economy. A group of researchers have focused on this method in
the past decades. The first study drawing on the input–output framework was conducted by Bicknell et al. (1998). They used it
to estimate the land resources that underpin domestic final consumption. Since then, several research studies have extended the
original work.
 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability 47

Ferng (2001) improves the method suggested by Bicknell et al. (1998) to estimate land resources. He states that the productive
land of industrial and economic sectors should also be included as well as the productive land used by manufacturing. Lenzen and
Murray (2001) also use the input–output framework to estimate land use and land distribution. They replaced money rows in the
input–output framework with values in physical units, and found that there is a high level of uncertainty about energy and emission
figures used in conjunction with the input–output framework. They also pointed out that the input–output framework based
estimates are associated with several types of errors including aggregation of data and the assumption of homogeneity of industry
output as well as measures average and not marginal use.
These works use ecological footprint to estimate the land use and land resources, while Wiedmann et al. (2006) use it as a perfor-
mance indicator for final consumption categories using input–output tables to allocate footprints to final consumption categories.
They develop a method that uses information obtained from the NFAs by constantly obtaining and updating information from
different sectors and groups in the industry. Turner et al. (2007) improve the single region input–output case into a multiregional
input–output framework, stating that the multiregional input–output framework potentially provides better quality information on
the land use connected to imported goods and services to a reference economy.
According to Beynon and Munday (2008), the use of input–output framework offers a better quality analysis in terms of
transparency and consistency in the estimation of ecological footprint. However, there appears to be a while before these methods
are fully standardized. The varying levels of sectoral aggregation used in the input–output framework remain limited by a series of
constraining assumptions (Miller and Blair, 1985), which influence the data availability and reconciliation (Turner et al., 2007). It is
also criticized by Beynon and Munday (2008) as being poor in accuracy in the underlying data and different levels of aggregation.

Carbon Footprint
There are various methods of accounting for the carbon footprint and often carbon footprint is captured as part of the GHG
emissions in most environmental emission studies. For calculating carbon footprint, the amount of GHG emitted, removed, or
embodied has to be assessed. Carbon footprint started becoming synonymous to the GHG emission assessment on a life cycle
perspective (Pandey et al., 2011). Carbon footprint can be accessed from household level through to complex city level depending
on the purposes of assessment. Over the years, different estimation methods have been developed and most of them are following
the GHG protocol worldwide.
One of the popular ones is a consumption-based (CB) method which is grounded on the global GHG emissions as a result of
economic final consumption from households, government, and capital investments. It includes GHG emissions of imports but
excludes the GHGs emitted in producing exports within the boundary. This approach treats GHGs in a fully upstream manner
tracing outside of the community boundary which accounts for the whole transboundary activities serving the final consumption
in the city. It is widely recognized that households are responsible for the major portion of consumption such as in the US 80% of
final demand are from households (Onat et al., 2014). Therefore, the CB approach fits well with the evaluation of household
impacts on the carbon footprint. In the application of this method, household consumption surveys constitute the key part of
the data collection of GHG emissions and for addressing the other constituents of final consumption; government and capital
investments, the downscaled version of input–output tables suiting city scale should be utilized (Jones and Kammen, 2011).
However, the precision of downscaled input–output tables that represents material and energy flows in cities are largely unknown.
Carbon emissions using the CB method can be calculated using the following formula (Ramaswami and Chavez, 2013):
X X
E¼ ½B  IO þ EF  F þ MF

where E is the total GHG emissions and B refers to the GHG intensity vector (mt-CO2e/$-output) (GDI, 2008). IO addresses the total
input–output matrix representing total (direct and indirect) interindustry requirements of domestically produced goods/services
and EF denotes the use phase combustion emissions factor of fuels that data can be obtained from the IPCC database (IPCC, 2016)
consumed by final consumption (e.g., natural gas, transport fuels). F is the portion of local final consumption met by local
production and MF represents the portion of local final consumption met by imports. F plus MF yield total final consumption by
households, government, and capital investments in the community.
From the policy makers’ perspective, the primary advantage of the CB method is its potential to demonstrate effectively the influence
of domestic sector consumption on the carbon footprint (Chavez and Ramaswami, 2013). It may indicate opportunities in making the
supply chain of activities and processes more environmentally friendly. However, a complete CB calculation is feasible when the precise
input–output information could be acquired in the city scope. Additionally, in this approach the community is divided into two parts in
which commercial–industrial processes for exports are not included in the analysis unit. This means that in some communities, such as
resort and industrial towns considerable proportions of the local economy may not be included. This means that regional policies may
not be appropriate.
The geographic-based accounting (GA) method is another calculation method in assessing carbon footprint. The boundary-limited
GA approach used in assessing carbon footprint is usually in national inventories and is also generally regarded as “production-based.”
It is because GHG emissions of fuel combustion resulting from final consumptions of personal houses and vehicles are included
(Ramaswami et al., 2012). In this method, GHGs generated through all production processes inside the national geopolitical borders
are counted together with the end use of energy in households. Such national GHGs are associated with the productivity rate like
GDP and is indicated as GHG/$GDP (Chavez and Ramaswami, 2011). Since a strict accounting of the GA method is not suitable
48 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability

for reporting GHG/person as a representation of peoples’ impact on the global GHG emissions, embodied carbon in the export and
import from a country should be further calculated. The equation for the GA approach is as follows (Huang and Deng, 2015):
X
n
E¼ energyi  CO2 emission factor i  C
i¼1

where emissions are the total GHG emitted, i refers to the energy type (e.g., coal, natural gas, petroleum, and electricity from fired
power plant), energyi addresses the amount of energy type i consumed (MM Btu/Mwh) multiplied by CO2 emission factor i of each
energy type that could be obtained from IPCC (2016) and C denotes a constant which is the fixed number of 0.2727.
In highly populated countries such as the United States, in-boundary productions constitute around 90% of GHG emissions that
are generated within the boundary while net import GHGs account for roughly 10% of the total GHG emissions (Chavez and
Ramaswami, 2011). Thus, the numerical results of purely GA and CB approaches may be similar for large countries. However,
purely geographic accounting is not appropriate for smaller regions as their infrastructure networks such as transport facilities or
power plants are linked and extended outside the boundaries. As an example, in the city of Denver, approximately 60% of laborers
commute from other areas each day for work. For the city of Denver electricity transmission networks exceed from 200 miles average
of United States whereas freight and food travel averages are accounted for 600 and 1500 miles, contributing to larger footprint
compared with larger cities (Hillman and Ramaswami, 2010).
There is another carbon footprint measurement method called the transboundary infrastructure supply chain (TBIS). The
TBIS is an innovative approach in carbon footprint accounting presented by Ramaswami et al. (2012) which highlights the
distinctions between cities and large regions in terms of basic infrastructure provision. For example, on the city scale, electricity
and food production mostly occur outside the geographic boundary of the city. In the TBIS, the idea of “scopes” as defined by
the GHG Protocol (Ranganathan et al., 2004) is employed to capture the crucial transboundary infrastructures that serve cities.
Hence, this approach can be considered an infrastructure-based supply chain footprint in the city scale. The TBIS captures GHGs
emitted from building facilities located in cities (Scope 1) and transboundary electric power supply (Scope 2), transboundary
transportation, waste management, and construction material infrastructures which provide cities (Scope 3) (Chavez and
Ramaswami, 2011). The formula of TBIS in the calculation is based on the following formula (Ramaswami et al., 2008):
X X
E¼ EU  EF þ MFA  EFLCA
electricity; natural gas; petrofuels key urban materials

where E is the summation of community-wide energy use (EU) which is the direct energy use of different sectors and multiplied by
the associated emission factor (EF) developed locally or could be again obtained from IPCC (2016). The calculation process is then
followed by adding the embodied energy and emissions associated with key urban materials (Ramaswami et al., 2008). These are
computed by multiplying a material flow analysis (MFA) of these materials within the city with the emission factors (EF) obtained
from environmental LCA of these materials.
The most positive aspect of applying TBIS is that it encapsulates all the activities within cities together with the essential transboundary
infrastructure used for these processes. Therefore, this approach satisfies authorities’ and regional planners’ requirements for more
in-depth evaluations of the future effects of transport, power, water, and material supplies. In fact, through addressing the future
environmental necessities, sectorial efficiency, and wide community’s supply chain vulnerabilities, TBIS is capable of presenting both
carbon footprints and climate adaptation opportunities of cities (Ramaswami et al., 2012).

Assessing Sustainability of CitiesdThe Use of Ecological and Carbon Footprints

Problems of Population Growth and Urbanization in Cities
Cities accommodate more than half the population worldwide and serve as major hubs of culture, entertainment, education, business,
and political authorities (Sovacool and Brown, 2010; Gehl, 2013). Over the last century, the world population has multiplied and the
consumption of resources and generation waste has been faster than the natural environment can carry (Galli et al., 2012). According
to Grimm et al. (2008) in 1900 urban living accounted for approximately 10% of the global population. However, in 2014 more than
54% of the world’s population live in urban areas and this figure will increase to 66% by 2050 (United Nations, 2014). Grimm et al.
(2008) state that more than 95% of the net increase in the global population live in cities of developing countries, which will approach
the 80% urbanization level of most industrialized nations today.
With the increase in urbanization, new megacities (population greater than 10 million) are found, especially in developing
countries. From only 10 megacities in the world in 1990 there are 28 in 2014 and it is projected there will be 41 by 2030 (United
Nations, 2014). The increasing urbanization has caused numerous problems (Grimm et al., 2008). Urbanization has placed an
increasing demand on goods and services to support humanity’s daily activities; in both the natural and man-made environment.
Urbanization can also impact on changing land use patterns to produce shelters, infrastructure, and facilities to cope with the ever-
increasing population that may lead to destruction of natural habitat and increased carbon emissions. Finally, urbanization may
also have adverse effect on the biogeochemical cycles, climate, hydro-systems, and biodiversity due to air pollution and waste
generated in cities and entering the air and water.
 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability 49

In spite of occupying less than 1% of the land of our planet, cities are responsible for approximately 67% of global energy
demand and this figure is predicted to increase to 75% in the next two decades (Perez-Lombard et al., 2008). Likewise, around
three-quarters of the carbon are emitted from the activities such as fossil fuel combustion and the manufacturing of building
materials such as cement, reinforcement, and other materials usage in cities (Nordbo et al., 2012). Therefore, indicators such as
ecological and carbon footprints play an important role in describing current natural resource reserves and the carrying capacity
of the Earth so that remedial actions can be identified and undertaken before it is too late.

Assessing Ecological Footprint of Cities

When proposed in 1997, ecological footprint was the first systematic framework for calculating biocapacity and waste at the city
scale (Borucke et al., 2013). Building on these assessments the Global Footprint Network (GFN) was founded in 2003 in the United
States, Belgium, and Switzerland and initiated its National Footprint Accounts (NFAs). The NFAs measure humanity’s demand on
nature for major cities in different countries. According to the NFAs (2014), at the world and national level humanity demand for
resources and services was approximately 1.5 times the capacity of the planet in 2010 (Toth and Szigeti, 2016). Of the six land types
considered, the carbon footprint measured as the carbon uptake land component measured was by far the largest, at approximately
54% of humanity’s total ecological footprint (Mancini et al., 2016)
Ecological footprint at city scale is used to measure how much land and water a city requires to produce the resources it
consumes and to absorb its wastes. According to the Living Planet Report 2014 (WWF, 2014), the global average of ecological
footprint is approximately 2.6 gha per capita and Calgary, Canada, had a per capita of 9.8 gha, being the highest in the world.
Calgary in Canada was the first city in the world to apply the ecological footprint in reducing environmental impacts. It is
the largest city in Alberta, Canada, with a population of approximately 1.2 million. In 2005 Calgary in collaboration with GFN
participated in the first ecological footprint study (GFN, 2014). Calgary has an ecological footprint per capita of 9.8 gha. Ecological
footprint calculations reveal that with the ecological footprint per capita of Calgary extrapolated to the rest of the world, we may
need five Earths to satisfy the same consumption level as that of Calgary.
Based on the ecological footprint analysis, the City of Calgary developed strategies to reduce its ecological footprint to match
the national average of 7.25 gha per capita by 2036. Strategies included redeveloping downtown, proposing a multimodel
transportation network to improve mobility, and promoting working from home to reduce commuting to and from work to reduce
the ecological footprint. In addition, Calgary has started to use emissions free renewable energy to power its public light rail transit
system, signing the Calgary Climate Change Accord in 2009, and Calgary Community GHG Reduction Plan in 2011. In 2012
Calgary had achieved a 41% reduction of GHG emission below its 2005 levels (GFN, 2014).

Assessing Carbon Footprint of Cities

Carbon footprint has been applied to measure GHG emissions at city scale. One purpose is to allocate the in-boundary and
transboundary GHG emissions associated with cities in order to support rigorous policy-making strategies. World Resources
Institute (WRI) has developed a concept of “scope” to describe the in-boundary and transboundary emissions helping to define
the organizational boundaries of carbon footprints associated with the city scale activities (Ranganathan et al., 2004). Across the
world, there are many initiatives designed to promote low carbon cities. The three scopes can be defined as follows:
l Scope 1 Direct Emissionsdthis scope encompasses the direct emission from combusting in-boundary fossil fuels.
l Scope 2 Indirect Emissionsdthis scope includes indirect emissions from energy generated outside the established in-boundary
limits as a consequence of the consumption of grid electricity.
l Scope 3 Indirect Emissionsdthis scope includes the whole indirect emission from processes of the supply chain life cycle for
materials and energy carriers which are produced outside of the boundary. It should be noted that in a consumption-based
approach, the life cycle GHGs emitted from products produced within the boundary that are exported for consumption
outside should be subtracted.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2007) and WRI (Ranganathan et al., 2004), the first and second scopes are
imperative for corporate accounting along with the consideration of applicable items of Scope 3 that formulate a supply chain GHG
mitigation strategies. However, it is evident that urban regions are different from corporations and there is still debate on the appro-
priate approach in assigning and designating the in-boundary and transboundary carbon footprints to cities. Three main methods
exist in the literature to measure the carbon footprints in the city context (Chavez and Ramaswami, 2011). Across the world, there
are many initiatives designed to incorporate cities into low carbon development, such as the Global Cities Covenant on Climate and
the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group that are focused on establishing emission reduction programs to reduce carbon concen-
tration in the atmosphere.
Brown and Logan (2008) undertook a project to assess carbon footprint of the top hundred metro areas in the United States and
the research reveals that high-density metro areas had the smallest footprint. These high-density metro areas offer greater energy and
carbon efficiency than nonmetropolitan areas as they have distinctive development patterns that allow for reducing carbon
emissions.
Sovacool and Brown (2010) measured carbon footprint of 12 metropolitan cities in the world by examining emissions related to
vehicles, energy used in buildings, industry, agriculture, and waste. The results reveal that four cities (Delhi, Manila, Sao Paulo, and
50 Ecological and Carbon FootprintsdThe Future for City Sustainability

Beijing) have carbon footprints smaller than the global average due to the relatively high usage of public transportation. London
was close to the global average while Los Angeles had by far the largest, followed by Singapore, New York, and Mexico City.

Conclusion

This article reviews the concept and methodological framework of ecological and carbon footprints in assessing environmental
sustainability on the city scales. Approximately half of the global population lives in urban areas which serve as centers of produc-
tion, consumption, and waste generation that drive land change and create a host of global environmental problems. With the rapid
growth of population and urbanization, particularly in developing countries, ecological and carbon footprint measurements oper-
ate as indicators that enable policy makers to set goals, identify remedial actions, and monitor progress. The development of the
ecological and carbon footprint is intended to assist policy makers and general public in understanding the diverse pressures human
activities place on the planet. They represent a quantifiable and rational basis which reveals the use of natural resources, GHG emis-
sions, and also indicate areas that needed attention so that actions can be developed to address the sustainability of natural capital
use across the globe.
Ecological footprint as a resource accounting tool measures the land and water areas that supply ecological goods and services to
support the survival of humankind and compare them with the regenerative capacity of the Earth. In the past century humanity’s
demand on nature has exceed what the planet can replenish. Carbon footprint captures the total GHG emissions in relation to
human activities that are believed to be the cause of global warming and climate change. Therefore, any decision aimed at reducing
carbon footprint of cities is significant before it is too late. The development of low carbon living and zero carbon cities across the
world has become the highest priority on both the national and international agenda.

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Further Reading

Global Footprint Network (GFN), 2005. Case study: Calgary, global footprint network. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calgary_case_study.

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