Is Humanity Sustainable?

Presented by William Rees, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Ames

Sponsored by the ISU Bioethics Program, Ecology Initiative of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and the ISU Committee on Lectures funded by GSB

Rees is best known for his work on the ecological footprint analysis, a concept that provides a comprehensive to calculate the environmental impact of a country, city or individual. His book on this topic, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, co-authored with Mathis Wackernagel, was published in 1995.

An ecological footprint is the measure of how much land and water area a human population needs to produce the resources required to sustain itself and to absorb its wastes, given current technology. This approach has won wide acceptance as an effective method of summarizing the human impact on the planet, of everything from food production and land use, to greenhouse gases and pollution.

Rees is professor and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His opinions have appeared frequently in the journal Nature and his work is widely taught in a variety of disciplines including conservation biology, urban planning and philosophy.

Rees also presented at the November 30 ISU Sustainable Agriculture colloquium on "Agriculture's Contribution to Our Ecological Footprint."

Measure your ecological footprint [Earth Day Network]

Per capita eco-footprints of selected countries (2001 data)

Per capita cropland eco-footprints and domestic cropland of selected countries

William Rees

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 209 Curtiss Hall,
Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011-1050 PH: (515)294-3711
Fax:(515)294-9696 Email: leocenter@iastate.edu