Reducing Norway’s Footprint
We are in an era of unprecedented global environmental change, driven almost entirely by human activities. The climate crisis, disruption of global biochemical cycles, conversion of natural ecosystems to agricultural land, intensive aquaculture and overfishing, and chemical and plastic pollution are driven by overconsumption, unsustainable extraction rates, and by the methods we use to produce and consume material goods. Put simply, our production and consumption is exceeding planetary boundaries (1).
Alauda, working in collaboration with WWF Norway and Deloitte Norway, worked out how much of its fair share of the planet’s resources Norway is using across a wide range of different environmental footprints. We were able to quantify Norway’s greenhouse gas, material consumption, biomass, nitrogen, phosphorus, and ecological footprints. We also assessed the less quantifiable footprints of marine resource use, land use change and degradation, chemical, air and water pollution, and water availability and flows.
The results are striking: Norway has to reduce its use of the earth’s resources by two thirds.
There are many specific things that can be done to reduce Norway’s ecological footprint, from using sustainable and circular building materials, adopting agroecological farming to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous use, eliminating deforestation from agricultural and forestry supply chains, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions form housing, transport and the food system.
We also identified three transformative overall approaches that should be front and centre of policy development:
· Put nature at the heart of governance. Adjust and complement national planning and governance instruments, so that they effectively implement cross sectoral targets and indicators based on a footprint approach to the economy.
· A circular revolution. The best way to reduce Norway’s ecological footprint is through circular economic action that can help us lower overall material consumption and reduce demand for new harmful extraction.
· Food system transformation. A more sustainable food system can provide our needs through productive and long-term management of agriculturally productive land, better diets, and less use and pollution of nutrients, significantly decreasing our footprint across all indicators.
It will be fascinating to see how a country that is both wealthy and has an abundance of natural resources responds to these challenges.
A summary of the work is available here.
Rockström, J. et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461 (7263): 472–475.