The Winners and Losers in Global Competition

by Sturm, Andreas; Wackernagel, Mathis; Muller, Kaspar

• ISBN13: 9781557533579
• ISBN10: 1557533571
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-24
• Publisher: Purdue Univ Pr

Summary

Our dominant culture continues to celebrate blind economic expansion despite its heavy toll on people and nature all over the globe. In fact, our national income accounts (such as the GDP) and our policies ignore that much of today's economic income stems from liquidating our social and natural assets. While living on the planet's capital, rather than on the interest (or sustainable harvest) of its renewable assets, we operate as if we could transgress ecological limits forever. Rather than acknowledging this ecological reality, we actively resist recognizing biophysical limits and use wealth to temporarily shield ourselves from the fallout of ecological overshoot. This study addresses the core question of sustainability and shows why nations will also secure their future competitiveness if they improve their ecological performance. Taken together, all the countries studied consume approximately one-third more ecological services than their available ecological capacity can provide, suggesting that the global economy as a whole is poorly positioned for future competition. Still we find that the European countries, Japan , and Canada (this last because of its large ecological remainder) are in distinctly more favorable starting positions for future competitiveness than all the other countries. They are better at using fewer resources to produce commodities, and, in the case of the countries with ecological remainders, they take better care of their existing ecological capacities. Perhaps the most significantcant finding is that 16 of the 20 eco-efficiency leaders (about 80 percent) are competitive, compared to only 11 of the 24 eco-efficiency laggards (about 45 percent). This suggests either that eco-efficiency already offers a competitive edge or that competitiveness and high eco-efficiency are not mutually exclusive.

Author Biography

Kaspar Muller has been a founding member and partner of Ellipson Ltd. since 1990. Andreas Sturm has been a partner of Ellipson Ltd. since 1992.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	6	(1)
List of Tables	6	(1)
List of Abbreviations	7	(5)
Preface	12	(3)
Abstract	15	(1)
Introduction and Overview	16	(1)
Defining and Measuring ``Sustainable Competitiveness''	16	(9)
How Sustainably do Nations Operate?	25	(21)
Measuring Human Use of Nature with the Ecological Footprint	27	(2)
Finding Our Limits	29	(2)
Ecological Debtors and Creditors	31	(6)
``Big Feet'' and ``Little Feet''	37	(2)
``Heavyweights'' and ``Lightweights''	39	(2)
Sustainable Gross Domestic Product	41	(5)
Ranking the Nations	46	(21)
Ecological ``Bulls'' and ``Bears''	46	(5)
Eco-Efficiency Leaders and Laggards	51	(4)
Eco-Efficiency and Ecological Capacity: Green and Red Leaders and Laggards	55	(3)
Eco-Efficiency and Competitiveness: Efficient and Inefficient Bulls and Bears	58	(5)
Winners and Losers in Competition	63	(4)
Outlook: Environmental Strategies at the Turn of the Millennium	67	(9)
References	76	(3)
Authors	79	(2)
Contact Addresses	81	(1)
Notes	82