Executive Summary

Scope of the report

This report estimates the ecological footprints for New Zealand and its 16 regional council areas for the year 1997/98. The ecological footprint measures the total amount of productive land (in hectares) required to support a given population. It is increasingly being used as an indicator of sustainability performance after being developed by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) in the early 1990s.

An input-output methodology based on the one developed by Bicknell et al (1998) is extended in this report and then used in the calculation of the ecological footprints. The report also critically reviews the ecological footprint concept and methodology, particularly as it relates to the analysis and calculations contained in the report.

New Zealand's ecological footprint

The New Zealand ecological footprint was calculated to be 11,684,500 ha for 1997/98. This represents the total amount of land required to sustain the New Zealand population in 1997/98. It consists of inputs of agricultural land (8,036,600 ha), forest land (744,410 ha), degraded/ built-up land (959,250 ha) and of so-called energy land (1,944,940 ha) which is the hypothetical amount of land required to absorb the CO₂ emissions produced by New Zealand.

The amount of usable land available in New Zealand is calculated to be 17,783,949 ha. Usable land is defined as the total land area of New Zealand excluding national parks, forest parks, reserves and non-productive land. On this basis, the ecological footprint of the New Zealand population occupies 65.70 percent of the usable land. This means, assuming the per capita footprint remains unchanged, New Zealand could increase its population by 1.52 times before it overshoots its carrying capacity. New Zealand is, in fact, one of the few developed countries along with Canada and Australia that lives within its land-based carrying capacity, and in that sense can be considered a sustainable economy.

An analysis of the Balance of Trade for New Zealand indicates that a further role for the New Zealand economy is to provide the rest of the world with land-based ecological capital. Overall, through the export of mainly agricultural products (meat, dairy, wool) but also horticultural products, forestry products and to a lesser extent some manufacturing products, New Zealand exports embodied land, amounting to 11,090,370 ha, to other countries. This means that in embodied land terms, about half of the production of the New Zealand economy is channelled into local consumption and about half into products for exports. In comparison, the land embodied in imported products such as food, motor vehicles, computers, textiles and raw materials for industry is much smaller at 3,293,000 ha.

The per capita footprint for New Zealand is calculated to be 3.08 ha per person. This was compared with the per capita footprint of other countries after making adjustments for land productivity, as is recommended by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) and Loh (2000). On an adjusted basis, New Zealand's ecological footprint increases to 8.35 hectares (global equivalents/person), due to New Zealand land being 2.5 times more productive than the global average (ie. a hectare of New Zealand land is equivalent to 2.5 ha of the global average land). The United States (+46.70%), Denmark (+25.86%), Ireland (+14.13%) and Australia (+1.80%) all had higher adjusted per capita ecological footprints than New Zealand. These differences can be explained by the higher income, higher levels of material affluence and consumption in these countries. There are however a number of countries that have higher per capita income (per capita GDP) than New Zealand, but somewhat surprisingly have lower ecological footprints per capita: Canada (-8.02%), France (-12.57%), Hong Kong (-14.49%), Germany (-25.03%), United Kingdom (-25.03%), the Netherlands (-28.33%) and Japan (-29.34%). There appears to be a greater decoupling between economic growth (income per capita) and the ecological footprint (embodied land per capita) in these countries, seemingly due to higher population densities usually but not always associated with urbanisation, diet and lifestyle factors, and technological factors all of which reduce the use of land and resource use in general.

Regional ecological footprints

The bulk of the report involves a detailed and systematic analysis of the ecological footprints for the 16 regional council areas in New Zealand. A particular feature of this analysis is the quantification of interregional flows of embodied land; which leads to insights into the ecological interdependencies between the regions and also between regions and other countries.

The largest regional ecological footprint is Auckland's at 2,319,940 ha which is not surprising given that it has the largest population of any region in New Zealand. Auckland makes up 21.66 percent of the New Zealand ecological footprint. Canterbury is a clear second with an ecological footprint of 1,737,860 ha that makes up 16.23 percent of New Zealand's ecological footprint. Although Canterbury has a similar population to Wellington, it has a relatively higher per capita footprint that gives it a much larger footprint than Wellington's of 1,029,010 ha. Waikato (1,048,860 ha) and Otago (1,019,050 ha) have similar size footprints to Wellington.

Next in the rankings is a cluster of provincial regions: Manawatu-Wanganui (879,500 ha), Northland (384,660 ha), Southland (375,310 ha), and Taranaki (233,150 ha). Last in the rankings come a number of smaller more peripheral regions: Marlborough (163,180 ha), Gisborne (141,660 ha), West Coast (121,810 ha), Tasman (82,180 ha) and Nelson (76,910 ha). Although population is the main determinant of size of these ecological footprints, the per capita footprint is important and varies according to regional differences in land productivity, consumption patterns, the degree of urbanisation and population densities.

Assessing the sustainability performance of the regions

The sustainability performance of the 16 regions can be assessed against two criteria:

Ecological footprint per capita. This measures the amount of land appropriated by a person (in a nation, region or city) in supporting their consumption. The smaller this amount of land, then the more sustainable this pattern of consumption is deemed to be, because it requires less appropriated natural capital (as measured by embodied land).
Degree of overshoot. It is argued that to be sustainable, a population (of a nation, region or city) must consume less embodied land, than the amount of useful land which is available. That is, the population must live within its carrying capacity or biocapacity. If the population overshoots its carrying capacity, by using too much land, then it is argued that this amount of land cannot sustain the population.

Graphical analysis reveals, that in terms of these two criterion, there are three significant clusters of regions:

Auckland, Wellington and Nelson. These regions have overshot their carrying capacity, but all have a per capita footprint below the New Zealand average. Notably, these are the three most urban regions in New Zealand. It is predictable, that if an ecological footprint analysis was undertaken for any other 'urban' area in New Zealand that a similar result would occur (eg. if an ecological footprint was calculated for Christchurch City, instead of the entire Canterbury region). The reason why one indicator (per capita footprint) is performing well, and the other (overshoot) is performing poorly is straight forward - urban areas simply use land more efficiently in terms of retail, housing, infrastructure and transport functions, as high population densities reduce space requirements. At the same time the more urban a region is, the more it has to draw resources (particularly food) from outside the region, resulting in an ecological deficit or overshoot situation.
Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki and Tasman. These are apparently the 'best' performing regions. They perform favourably for both indicators - their footprint per capita is below the New Zealand average and they are not in an ecological deficit or overshoot situation. This result however needs to be interpreted with caution. All of these regions have above average land productivities (except Gisborne) which will decrease their per capita footprint - in other words, the per capita footprint is lower, not so much because people in these regions consume less products or live more sustainably, but more because the land in their region is more productive and therefore less of it is required to produce the same amount of products. None of these regions is urban, and if a footprint analysis was undertaken for any one of the urban areas within these regions (eg. Hamilton City) undoubtedly an ecological deficit or overshoot situation would arise.
Northland, Manawatu-Wanganui, Marlborough, West Coast, Canterbury, Otago and Southland. These regions are not in an overshoot or ecological deficit situation which is a favourable outcome. However, their per capita footprints are above the New Zealand average which is not a favourable outcome. Again, the interpretation of these results needs to be approached with caution. The unfavourable outcome, in terms of the relatively high per capita footprint, in most cases can be explained away purely by the low land productivities in these regions. All of these regions (except Northland and Manawatu-Wanganui) have land productivities below the national average, meaning more land is required to produce the same amount of product that inflates their per capita footprint. This is particularly the case for Otago. Therefore, it could be argued that these regions do not necessarily consume more products and resources than other regions on a per capita basis, rather they require more land to produce the same amount of products.

Outstanding research issues

This analysis represents the first comprehensive and systematic quantification of regional level ecological footprints in New Zealand. The analysis could however be improved by:

undertaking the analysis at the 48 sector (or greater) level, instead of at 23 sectors. This would lead to more accurate results particularly concerning the appropriation of agricultural land. This would be especially useful in understanding the impact of diet on the ecological footprint
a series of New Zealand based land productivity factors need to be derived and applied to the data. This should allow for a more rigorous comparison of sustainability performance across the regions
improving the accuracy of the regional input-output matrices and the interregional trade flow model which were used in the ecological footprint calculations
including coastal and marine 'land' in the analysis. It is recommended in any future application of this methodology to calculate regional-level ecological footprints that these improvements be implemented.

The report also contains a number of specific suggestions for enhancing the relevance of the analytical results for individuals, policymakers and other end-users. For individuals, the calculations could be refocused to show people how they can reduce their footprint by changing their consumption behaviour and lifestyles. The recently instigated personal ecological footprint calculator which is available on the Ministry for the Environment's website, is a positive move in this direction. For policymakers, the strategic and policy implications of future trends in the ecological footprints are of particular relevance, and this is an area that requires further research. The setting of targets and performance standards for ecological footprints is another area that requires attention by policymakers and planners.

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