PROJECT SUMMARY:
ENVIRONMENTAL SPACE

Background and purpose

The Ministry of Environment and Energy has initiated three development projects to investigate possible methods to define environmental space relating to different resources. The National Environmental Research Institute NERI prepared a report on environmental space relating to land use and food. To support the NERI evaluation of the future use of land for food production, the Danish Forest and Landscape Research Institute FLRI prepared a report on land use in Denmark 1995-2025. The National Forest and Nature Agency and the FLRI prepared a report on environmental space and forests, and Cowi Consult has for the Danish EPA prepared a report on environmental space for the non-renewable resources oil, copper and lime.

The basic objective of these investigations was to clarify methodological aspects of environmental space. One of the questions raised is whether environmental space can be used to set guiding marks for the use of resources. This report gives an overall picture of work in the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy on environmental space, based on the problems and results of the investigations reported in the three method development projects.

The investigation

Environmental space means the resources available for consumption today without compromising the availability of the same quantities and qualities of resources to future generations - inter-generational equity. Environmental space aims at clarifying the environmental dimension of sustainable development.

Environmental space is one of several concepts - e.g. ecological rucksack and ecological footprint, where present resource consumption is seen in a long-term global context. Environmental space is also one of several concepts like the reduction targets Factor Four and Factor Ten, where focus is more on the overall resource consumption - from cradle to grave - and consequent environmental impacts. Historically, environmental space is thus a continuation of the debate in the 1970’s on limits to growth and the recommendations of the UN Commission on Environment and Development report "Our Common Future" on sustainable growth.

Project results

All three projects indicate that - to ensure that future generations have access to the same quantities and qualities of resources as we have now - the perspective of environmental space points toward substantial reductions of resource use in industrial countries. The projects also show that it is very difficult to quantify the scope of consumption acceptable today in order to secure inter-generational equity.

From the project on land use and food production appears that sufficient food for the world population of 9.8 thousand million can only be produced by sustainable methods, if substantial gains in productivity are achieved in the developing countries, if needless food consumption is reduced, or if the share of meat in our daily diet is reduced especially in the Western countries. The project also shows how much food can be produced if more land is used for food production - i.a. areas which are today designated as nature reserves - and by production methods based on large pesticide and fertilizer input. The project thus indicates that the environmental space for land use and food depends on how the quality of the environment and changed production and consumption patterns are balanced against each other.

Danish consumption of wood is based on production in Denmark and imports from the countries surrounding us, and the project on environmental space relating to forests therefore focuses on the production and consumption of wood in a regional context, The project indicates that Danish wood consumption is larger than the present global average. The project uses environmental space as a framework for long-term resource and environment development trends for the production of wood in Denmark, relating it i.a. to afforestation and increased use of wood for energy supply, which may trigger competing demands for land.

The project on non-renewable resources - copper, oil and lime - investigates different assumptions governing the environmental space for non-renewable resources. The assumptions are based on different aspects of sustainable resource use, e.g. resource availability for a given period of time, and assumptions relating to the quality of the environment. These assumptions are used to calculate different measures of environmental space. The project indicates that the limits to environmental space are set more by the environmental impact of extraction and consumption, than by the availability of resources.

Conclusion

An overall evaluation of the projects indicate that non-renewable resources - oil, copper, and lime - are better suited for assessment in the context of environmental space than are renewable resources, since non-renewable resources can be quantified more simply and the direct interrelation between resource consumption and negative environmental impacts is more pronounced.

The project on non-renewable resources also indicates that calculations of environmental space for oil and copper can be used to set guiding marks for the use of these resources. The calculations of environmental space are subject to great uncertainty, and the guiding marks should therefore be considered as estimated indicators of resource consumption.

The project on non-renewable resources uses different criteria for resource consumption to calculate different environmental space scenarios, e.g. resource availability for a given time, and determination of environmental quality. Using different assumptions, different scenarios can be calculated, and different guiding marks can be set up.

When widening the perspective, from one single raw material to a broader sectoral approach - in this case renewable resources such as wood and global food production - guiding marks are not considered appropriate. What is particularly difficult in the determination of the environmental space for renewable resources is to determine the extent of the resources on the basis of assumptions relating to land use, method of utilization, quality of the environment etc., assumptions which are a result of overall socio-economic decisions and to some extent dependent on matters falling outside the sector which is studied.

Alternatively, in the projects on land use and food and on forests, environmental space is used as a basis for outlining some long-term development trends and options available for the resources, instead of trying to define environmental space in exact figures.

From the project on land use and food appears that the use of scenarios is well suited to clarify the options relating to resource use and environmental quality which will result from the future use of resources.

Especially in connection with the analysis of environmental space for renewable resources, the conclusion is that resources and environment do not offer sufficiently wide perspectives for using environmental space to define sustainable development more precisely.