Measuring environmental impact at the neighbourhood level

Abstract

We propose that community assessments of environmental impact are increasingly more relevant to planners and policy makers when reported at finer scales of analysis. Using the Town of Oakville, Ontario, as an example, we calculate neighbourhood level ecological footprint values for 241 neighbourhoods. Ecological footprint results range from 5.4 global hectares per capita to 15.2 global hectares per capita, with an average ecological footprint for Oakville of 9.0 global hectares per capita. Our results highlight variability in energy and material flows within a community, providing planners and policy makers detailed information to prioritise programme delivery, allocate limited resources, and support policy development. The lower range of neighbourhood ecological footprint values suggests a potential footprint floor for Oakville of around 5 hectares per capita. The notion of a footprint floor has implications for setting community footprint targets and understanding the magnitude of change needed for significant ecological footprint reductions.

Keywords:

• environmental impact
• ecological footprint
• sustainable communities
• indicators
• local governance

Notes

1. Neighbourhood is used throughout the paper to describe geographically contiguous populations of 400 to 700 households.

2. A global hectare is a standardised hectare to account for the fact that different land types, and different land categories, have different productivity or biocapacity potentials. A common unit allows for the meaningful summation of different land types and categories and also allows for meaningful comparisons of footprint results between regions and countries. Land types are adjusted, reflecting the fact that land types (for example, agriculture land) have different productivity potentials depending on the region. Productivity potential can vary both within a country and across countries. The productivity potential of the different land categories is also converted to global hectares, so the different land categories can be summed into a total ecological footprint value. For example, cropland in the ecological footprint methodology is considered to be more productive than pasture land. The land category conversion factors are based on global scientific data and updated by the Global Footprint Network (Ewing et al. 2008).