Humanity’s unsustainable environmental footprint
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23360482 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Arjen Y Hoekstra (0000-0002-4769-5239, Twente Water Centre, Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands., corresponding author), Thomas Wiedmann (0000-0002-6395-8887, The University of Sydney), Thomas O Wiedmann (School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 344 |
| Issue | 6188 |
| Pages | 1114-1117 |
| Publication date | 2014-06-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-8075 • E-ISSN: 0193-4511 |
| Publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1126/science.1248365 |
| PMID | 24904155 |
| OpenAlex | W2113219607 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 173 |
| References cited | 50 |
Within the context of Earth’s limited natural resources and assimilation capacity, the current environmental footprint of humankind is not sustainable. Assessing land, water, energy, material, and other footprints along supply chains is paramount in understanding the sustainability, efficiency, and equity of resource use from the perspective of producers, consumers, and government. We review current footprints and relate those to maximum sustainable levels, highlighting the need for future work on combining footprints, assessing trade-offs between them, improving computational techniques, estimating maximum sustainable footprint levels, and benchmarking efficiency of resource use. Ultimately, major transformative changes in the global economy are necessary to reduce humanity’s environmental footprint to sustainable levels.
Business · Context (archaeology) · Ecological footprint · Economics · Environmental economics · Environmental resource management · Equity (law) · Footprint · Geography · Natural resource · Natural resource economics · Resource Efficiency · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Ecology · Environmental Impact and Sustainability · Environmental Science · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies
Sufficiency values through commoning relationality
Ambitious food system interventions required to mitigate the risk of exceeding Earth’s environmental limits
Hanehalkı Karbon Ayak İzinin Yavaş Kent Ölçeğinde İrdelenmesi; Bolu - Mudurnu Örneği
Ods 8
Counter-Hegemonic Decision Premises in Commons-Based Peer Production
Sustainability science as if the world mattered
Transboundary flows in the metacoupled Anthropocene
The role of financial development and globalization in the environment
Extrapolation or saturation – Revisiting growth patterns, development stages and decoupling
Tracing CO2 emissions in global value chains
Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits
Environmental and social footprints of international trade
The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus
Systems integration for global sustainability
National responsibility for ecological breakdown
Decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth
Four billion people facing severe water scarcity
Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem
Substantial nitrogen pollution embedded in international trade
Energy consumption, CO 2 emissions, and economic growth
Mapping urban–rural differences in the worldwide achievement of sustainable development goals
Tracing Primary PM 2.5 emissions via Chinese supply chains
Detailed carbon footprint of long-term care in an aging society
Eating healthy or wasting less? Reducing resource footprints of food consumption
Towards more spatially explicit assessments of virtual water flows
Tracing global supply chains to air pollution hotspots
Reducing water scarcity by improving water productivity in the United States
Global drivers of local water stresses and global responses to local water policies in the United States
Lost water and nitrogen resources due to EU consumer food waste
The control versus resilience rationale for managing systems under uncertainty
Global land use of diets in a small island community
The environmental footprint of academic and student mobility in a large research-oriented university
Off-stage ecosystem service burdens
Matching scope, purpose and uses of planetary boundaries science
The consumptive water footprint of the European Union energy sector
Closing the yield gap while ensuring water sustainability
Improved sustainability assessment of the G20’s supply chains of materials, fuels, and food
The growing importance of scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from industry
Global virtual water trade and the hydrological cycle
Different Material Footprint Trends between China and the World in 2007-2012 Explained by Construction- and Manufacturing-associated Investment
Influence of Publicity and Education and Environmental Values on the Green Consumption Behavior of Urban Residents in Tibet
The Problematic Role of Materialistic Values in the Pursuit of Sustainable Well-Being
Developing countries’ responsibilities for CO2 emissions in value chains are larger and growing faster than those of developed countries
Operational efficiencies reduce emission intensity of online shopping in China by one-third between 2000 and 2023
La décroissance urbaine est-elle soluble dans la transition écologique ? Expérimentations magdebourgeoises
The Water Footprint Concept and Water's Grand Environmental Challenges
Emission degrowth potential of Chinese city cluster toward carbon neutrality
The more you have, the more you want? Analysis of household material stocks and footprints
Assessing the Contribution of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Towards Organisational Biodiversity Footprints
Interprovincial food trade aggravates China’s land scarcity
Herman E. Daly (1938–2022)
The Dangers of Decoupling
The carbon cost of rising incomes
Leveraging international trade for the ecological transition
Resource efficiency-environmental unsustainability-social inequity “locked-in” for crop virtual water transfer
“A Sane Island in an Ocean of Madness”
Blockchain as a sustainability-oriented innovation
How to avoid the tragedy of alternative food networks (AFNs)? The impact of social capital and transparency on AFN performance
Integrating carbon-ecological footprints for determining inter-regional environmental imbalance risk and compensation strategy under multiple scenarios
Spatial optimization of land use and carbon storage prediction in urban agglomerations under climate change
Dynamic changes and sustainability assessment of food consumption footprint in megacities
Measuring Qinghai-Tibet plateau's sustainability
Estimating sustainability and regional inequalities using an enhanced sustainable development index in China
Past-to-future resources utilization efficiency and cross-regional compensation strategies in urban agglomerations driven by environmental footprint dynamic assessment
Exploring the causal relationship between urbanization and air pollution
Delineating urban growth boundaries under multi-objective and constraints
Integrated water resources management in cities in the world
Carbon reduction benefits of photovoltaic-green roofs and their climate change mitigation potential
Spatial patterns in urban water consumption
Regulating Consumption for Sustainability? Why the European Union Chooses Information Instruments to Foster Sustainable Consumption
Educación para la Justicia Ambiental
Bound by ethical complexities and socio-material histories
Four perspectives on water for global food production and international trade
The footprint’s fingerprint
Potentials and limitations of footprints for gauging environmental sustainability
Toward “hardened” accountability? Analyzing the European Union's hybrid transnational governance in timber and biofuel supply chains
Using markets to leverage investment in forest and landscape restoration in the tropics
Is Green Growth Possible
Understanding the Evolution of Sustainable Consumption Research
The contradiction of the sustainable development goals
Sustainable Consumption and Production
Wellbeing and Sustainability
Governance Pathways to Sustainable Development
Towards Addressing Unintended Environmental Consequences
From Planetary Boundaries to national fair shares of the global safe operating space — How can the scales be bridged
Water, energy and land insecurity in global supply chains
National environmental limits and footprints based on the Planetary Boundaries framework
A contribution to harmonize water footprint assessments
Meeting future food demand with current agricultural resources
Estimating the global potential of water harvesting from successful case studies
Environmental and resource footprints in a global context
Towards a better future for biodiversity and people
Towards meaningful consumption-based planetary boundary indicators
Trends in Japanese households' critical-metals material footprints
Environmental change and ecosystem functioning drive transitions in social-ecological systems
The Circular Economy
The risk-based environmental footprints and sustainability deficits of nations
Material footprint and economic growth decoupling toward green development
Accounting matters
Environmental impact food labels combining carbon, nitrogen, and water footprints
Prosperity without Growth
Carbon Footprint of Nations
Growth in emission transfers via international trade from 1990 to 2008
A nitrogen footprint model to help consumers understand their role in nitrogen losses to the environment
Accounting for demand and supply of the biosphere's regenerative capacity
Carbon, Land, and Water Footprint Accounts for the European Union
Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C
Global Monthly Water Scarcity
Global land and water grabbing
The material footprint of nations
Post-Kyoto greenhouse gas inventories
International trade drives biodiversity threats in developing nations
Integrating Ecological, Carbon and Water footprint into a “Footprint Family” of indicators
Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne
The water footprint of humanity
Quantifying Carbon Footprint Reduction Opportunities for U.S. Households and Communities
Solutions for a cultivated planet
A safe operating space for humanity
Companies on the Scale
Carbon footprints of cities and other human settlements in the UK
Measuring sustainability
Human appropriation of natural capital
Luxury or ‘lock-in’? An exploration of unsustainable consumption in the UK
Shared producer and consumer responsibility — Theory and practice
A first empirical comparison of energy Footprints embodied in trade — MRIO versus PLUM
Rebound effect
Towards a revised planetary boundary for consumptive freshwater use
Biofuel scenarios in a water perspective
Affluence drives the global displacement of land use
The new competition for land
| Unique citing works | 173 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 15,73 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 163 |