Every individual, every household, every business and, ultimately, every country consumes resources. The footprint measures the amount of resources we use compared with what is available in the world.
This tells us what kind of mark we are leaving on the planet. In Wales, our footprint is too big: we use and pollute more than our fair share.
It can be applied to a product, individual, household, school, business, city, region or country. The Footprint allows us to see who is over-consuming and taking more than their ‘fair share’ of the Earth’s resources – and, at the other end of the scale, who’s not getting enough.
If each person in the world had a ‘fair share’ of all the productive land and sea available on the planet, it would work out at about two hectares for each of us. The Welsh Assembly Government and Stockholm Environment Institute calculated the average Welsh person’s footprint and discovered that it is 5.16 global hectares. This means that if everyone lived as we do in Wales we would need nearly three planets to sustain our current consumption patterns. This is the equivalent area of land the size of six rugby pitches per person!
Makes you think, doesn’t it? There are even larger footprints than those of Wales and the UK: the average American, for example, uses 9.6 hectares worth of resources – and if everyone consumed resources at that rate, we would need almost five planets to support us! Strikingly, most people in developing countries have very small footprints – the average Bangladeshi, for example, uses only half a hectare.