According to Jones and Jones (2014:179), ecological footprint is “the total equivalent biocapacity a material or a product needs to be created”. Jones (2017), added that it is an excellent mean to measure the demand of humankind on nature. In other words, the ecological footprint analysis seeks to evaluate an event’s sustainability by assessing its socio-economic impact on the environment based on a human being’s needs, such as its methods of transportation or its food and drink consumption (Clifton 2010). The Ecological Footprint Analysis is calculated as follows: I=PAT, with I as the human impact on the environment, as function of P for population, A as affluence in terms of consumption/production per capita and T for technology which represents the ecological impact per unit of consumption/production (Pernecky & Lück 2013). The ecological footprint is expressed in global hectares per capita (ghpc or gha) (Kitzes 2007; Footprint Network 2010a).

Table 1: The ecological footprint of Way out West | Source: Way out West (2013)

        For instance, in 2010 the Swedish music festival Way out West determined their ecological footprint at 1 918 ghpc – the human average ecological footprint is 2.7 ghpc (Footprint Network 2010b) – and realised that food, meat in particular, was the principal environmental factor. They consequently decided to become a vegetarian event, to reduce their ecological footprint. Based on their study (see Table 1), in 2012 the ecological footprint of the festival was reduced by 23.9%, the catering impact from 62% to 37% and the footprint per visitor decreased from 0.073 to 0.05 ghpc, whilst the number of attendees increased by 19% (Way out West 2013; Jones & Jones 2014). The Ecological Footprint Analysis may therefore be a an efficient measurement method toward a more sustainable event. 

References

Clifton, D.  (2010) ‘A sustainable world – an ecological footprint and I=PAT perspective’. Journal of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Accountability, 16(2), 3–26.

Footprint Network (2010a) Ecological Footprint [online] available from <www.footprintnetwork.org/> [10 March 2019].

Footprint Network (2010b) Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity – 2010 release[online] available from <www.footprintnetwork.org/> [10 March 2019].

Jones, M. (2017) Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Jones, M.L. and Jones, M. (2014) Sustainable Event Management. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Kitzes, J. (2007) A Research Agenda for improving National Ecological Footprint Accounts. ‘International Ecological Footprint Conference:  Stepping Up the Pace – New Developments in Ecological Footprint Methodology, Policy and Practice’. Held 8-10 May 2007 at Cardiff.

Pernecky, T. and Lück, M. (2013) Events, society and sustainability: critical and contemporary approaches. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Way out West (2013) Way out West [online] available from <http://go-group.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/GO_Group_Helsinki_NiklasLundell_WOW_casecatering.pdf> [10 March 2019].