Importing terrestrial biocapacity: The U.S. case and global implications

Human societies depend for their survival on goods and services provided by both local and global ecosystems. For most of history, people used mainly local resources. Increasingly, however, globalization and trade enable consuming populations everywhere to support themselves on the output of distant ecosystems. This is potentially problematic because of global change and because the spatial separation of material production (including resource exploitation) from consumption eliminates the direct negative feedback that normally occurs when people dependent on local ecosystems degrade those ecosystems. With spatial separation comes psychological separation. Modern consumers remain generally unconscious of their growing reliance on biophysical goods and services produced half a world away and see no connection between their consumer lifestyles and distant ecological consequences. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to raise a cautionary flag about unfettered trade and to show the value of accounting for trade-related physical flows and their impacts on natural capital in sustainability analyses. Using the United States as an example, we present an analytical method that can locate and measure the ecosystem area embodied in any population's imports of renewable resources. We quantify U.S. imports from specific countries around the world; we estimate the area of terrestrial ecosystems in those countries devoted to consumers in the U.S. and we highlight both increasing U.S. imports and their potential impact on extra-territorial ecosystems. This method creates indirect (conceptual) feedback between consumption and ecosystems integrity which we hope will partially replace the physical feedback neutralized by globalization. Such analyses can help generate public and decision makers’ awareness of both their dependence and their impacts on, distant natural capital stocks. This in turn should increase interest in establishing improved co-management regimes to maintain the stability and reliability of such now obligatory relationships.     

International trade related food miles – The case of Canada

At the beginning of the 21st century imports of agricultural and food commodities have become a major part of many nations’ food baskets. Indeed the global food system has several merits for nations, businesses and individual consumers’ well-being. However, as increasing evidence suggests that we are approaching an era of climate change and scarcity of cheap energy sources the sustainability of that system must be examined. One part of any food commodity chain is its ‘food miles’ – the distance the commodity travels from point of production to point of consumption, the required energy and resulting emissions. This paper presents a 1 year ‘snapshot’ of Canada’s total import related food miles. It presents an analysis of the distance imported foods traveled from around the world to major points of consumption in Canada and documents the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions related to those imports. It presents both a macro scale picture of the equivalent emissions related to transportation of imported food and a micro scale picture which focuses on specific commodities consumed in various parts of the country. It then discusses policy implications for food sustainability. Overall the research highlights that about 30% of the agricultural and food commodities consumed in Canada are imported, resulting in ‘food miles’ of over 61 billion tonnes km, leading to annual emissions of 3.3 million metric tonnes of CO₂. Of the various agriculture and food commodities studied, fruits and vegetables had the highest food miles related emissions.