The Effect of Consumerism and Production on the Environmental Footprint

In a world of ever-increasing environmental awareness, great importance has been placed on the environmental footprint that is left by both nations and individuals. It is used as an indicator of who is most to blame for the tragedy of the commons that is global climate change. The unit of measurement for the environmental footprint is greatly based on carbon emissions, which as we know, increase the number of environmental issues from the deepest oceans to the atmosphere which holds the air we breathe. It also includes an analysis of how many available resources are used versus how many are renewed. However, such an important indicator must be analyzed to ensure that it accurately shows who or what is most damaging. The unit of measurement is problematic because it only measures carbon emissions and not other factors that are considered particularly destructive. That issue, along with the reason why a nations’ wealth, and not its population, is most to blame for a larger environmental footprint is what this brief paper will analyze. We will also look at what a large environmental footprint means to the health of a nation. Using this analysis, we will look at what the implications are for quickly developing countries like India and China.

It is fundamentally important to first understand what the environmental footprint is and why some critics of the measurement find its usage problematic. The environmental footprint is based so heavily on carbon emissions that it fails to account for certain factors that would certainly raise the calculated carbon footprint of certain nations. Some of the factors that it fails to account for are grazing land, fishing grounds, and cropland that are depleted. It is common sense that these depletions (which make up a “footprint of consumption”) should also be considered what analyzing the true environmental footprint that a nation leaves (Blomquist 2013). These, in addition to the environmental footprint, are important, but understanding exactly why this number is high or low is an important step in managing global environmental damage.

The most important question in trying to reduce our global environmental footprint is, “Why?” Why do certain nations have such a drastically larger footprint than others? To find this answer, statistical analysis must be made. Common sense would indicate that a higher population would equal more individual ecological footprints and therefore a higher national footprint. This, however, is not so. Population density is the soundest way to analyze the given data set. It indicates how closely populated an area is rather than giving the overall population, which gives no indication of the size of that given area. Densely populated countries, such as India, Kenya, and Nigeria have relatively small environmental footprints, though they tend to have less healthy populations when compared with the lower density countries of Canada, France and Japan. This shows a negative correlation between population density and environmental footprint, rather than the positive one that may be expected. Health factors like infant mortality rates are at the higher end in these higher density countries which is important as it indicates that less healthy countries are the ones who leave the smallest environmental footprint (see given chart and graphs). Something that is immediately evident when considering these six countries, however, is that the latter three are considered “westernized”, or “first world”, with advanced data collection capabilities, while the former three and still considered as being “developing”, with less access to accurate data on a micro-scale (Kuzyk 2011). The overall data available does indicate that population density is not positively correlated with the national environmental footprint.

The negative correlation of environmental footprint to population density begs the question as to what does positively correlate. The answer can again be found in the numbers. The highest GNI’s can be found in the countries with the largest environmental footprints. The GNI measures wealth on an individual scale within the countries, so we can see that the wealthiest countries (within the given data set) have a tendency to consume the resources in the environment more quickly than they replenish them. The calculations show that the correlation between GNI and environmental footprint is .9799 which represents a strong, positive linear relationship. Due to the fact that their population densities are also among the lowest, the numbers show that the individuals in these wealthier nations are consuming more, on an individual basis, than their lower-earning counterparts. Much of the reason for this is because these countries tend to produce more. The production process increases both the nation’s wealth and its environmental footprint (Hayden 2009). Higher pollution levels from production combined with greater consumption by wealthier individuals come together in these nations to create a disproportionately large environmental footprint (Leahy 2013). One way to analyze the health of these same nations is to look at the Rate of Natural Increase, which is the crude birth rate minus the crude death rate of a population. In the case of the countries in our data set, there is a negative correlation of -.691 when comparing RNI to the EF. This indicates that as the EF goes up, the RNI goes down. Of course, correlation does not mean causation, but given the numbers, there is an indication that a higher environmental footprint means a slower Rate of Natural Increase. The correlation is not as strong as that between GNI and EF, but it is there. The conclusion is that richer countries (within our data set) tend to pollute more and have slower population growth.

There are nations that are caught in the middle of these numbers. China and India, for instance, have relatively small ecological footprints, but their GDP (and by extension GNI) is on the rise. The individual people within these countries are relatively poor when compared to France, Canada, and Japan (see given chart), but they are experiencing a large boom in production and manufacturing. China manufactures and exports so much, that stands to reason that it is only a matter of time that their environmental footprint will catch up to other wealthy nations (Jenkins 2013). Once the individuals of these countries begin to become wealthier, consumption will also increase, resulting in that kind of environmental situations that can be seen in those three wealthy countries analyzed here. This impending damage will be impacted by the fact that China spends so little on environmental preservation and revitalization when compared to other nations that boast such a large GDP (Yee 2013). If quickly developing countries such as China and India hope to avoid massive growth of their environmental footprint in years to come, they must battle the combination of high consumption and low environmental awareness.

Given the EF as a starting point for analyzing the impact that individual nations have on the environment, we begin to see patterns arise from the data. Population size has very little to do with environmental impact, while wealthy, consumerist nations have everything to do with it. Keeping this information in mind, it becomes easy to predict that a nation’s EF will grow right along with its wealth.

References

Blomquist, L., Brook, B. W., Ellis, E. C., Kareiva, P. M., Nordhaus, T., & Shellenberger, M. (2013). Does the shoe fit? Real versus imagined ecological footprints. Plos Biology, 11(11), 1-6. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001700

Hayden, A., & Shandra, J. M. (2009). Hours of work and the ecological footprint of nations: An exploratory analysis. Local Environment, 14(6), 575-600. doi:10.1080/13549830902904185

Jenkins, M. (2013). China and the United States: A yin-yang environmental relationship. Southwest Review, 98(4), 574-585.

Kuzyk, L. W. (2011). Ecological and carbon footprint by consumption and income in GIS: Down to a census village scale. Local Environment, 16(9), 871-886. doi:10.1080/13549839.2011.615303

Leahy, T. (2013). The perils of consumption and the gift economy as the solution Daniel Miller's consumption and its consequences. Electronic Green Journal, 1(35), 1-12.