Easter Sunday marks UK's ecological debt

Article taken from the new economics foundation website

New calculations from nef (the new economics foundation) reveal that on Easter Sunday this year, 12 April, the UK in effect stopped relying on its own natural resources to support itself and started to 'live off' the rest of the world.

At current UK levels of consumption our 'ecological debt day' - the day we begin living beyond our environmental means - falls only a third of the way through the year. The calculation is made from a projected trend based on ten years worth of the latest data on the UK's ecological footprint.

As our total consumption grows and ecosystems become more stressed, the day on which we begin consuming beyond our environmental means is moving ever earlier in the year.

In 1961 it was 9 July. By 1981 Britain's ecological debt day was reached almost two months earlier on 14 May. Now, in 2009, it falls on Easter Sunday, 12 April.

The UK's ecological debt and reliance on the rest of the world is revealed, for example, in our rising dependence on imports of food and energy. National food self-sufficiency is in long-term decline, recently reaching its lowest level for decades. We have become increasingly dependent on imports at precisely the time when, for several reasons to do with climate change, competition for energy resources, economic instability and changing consumption patterns, the guarantee of the rest of the world's ability to provide for us is weakening.

At the same time, however, official statistics reveal the UK to be part of a bizarrely wasteful system of international trade. Previously nef research revealed years in which virtually identical amounts of identical goods were imported and exported.

The latest trade data reveal, for example, that in 2007 the UK exported 1.8 million tonnes of 'essential oils, perfumes and toilet preparations,' while it imported 1.5 million tonnes - lorries and ships passing each other in the night.

Yet, recent research by nef, shows how the need for urgent action on energy security and climate change has been eclipsed by official responses to the banking crisis. While the UK government was able, according to the International Monetary Fund, to provide support to the financial sector equivalent to 20 per cent of the nation's GDP, new and additional spending for green measures in the Treasury's Pre Budget Report amounted to just 0.0083 percent of GDP.

Andrew Simms, nef Policy Director and Head of the Climate Change Programme, commented:

"Uncontrolled growth of financial debt is currently laying waste to large parts of the global economy. An explosion of ecological debt looks set to do the same to a biosphere friendly to human civilisation. The difference is, nature doesn't do bail-outs.

"In responding to the financial crisis, the Government assessed the scale and nature of response needed to prevent the collapse of the banking system, now they need to assess the scale and nature of the climate crisis and respond accordingly to prevent catastrophic global warming. So far, they have shouted fire, but failed to get the water hoses or fire crew needed to put the global fire out." says Andrew Simms, nef Policy Director and Head of the Climate Change Programme.

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