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What Good are Footprints? Frontier Research in Footprinting for Sustainability

  • 1.  What Good are Footprints? Frontier Research in Footprinting for Sustainability

    Posted 02-17-2014 11:18

    What Good are Footprints?
    Yale Journal Examines Frontier Research in Footprinting for Sustainability

    The notion of environmental “footprinting” as a way to represent the impact of human activity on the planet’s environment has become a veritable industry over the last two decades.
     
    Since the concept first gained popularity in the 1990s ­- when it was introduced by researchers William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel -­ footprinting has been used to explain a range of complicated phenomena as a single metric, spawning carbon footprints, water footprints, and various other indicators to communicate the human impact on the carrying capacity of Earth.
     
    In “Frontiers in Footprinting,” a special feature in the new issue of Yale University’s Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE), leading voices in the field of industrial ecology provide contrasting viewpoints on the value of footprinting and explore new opportunities that this still-evolving field continues to offer. Articles debate the merits of ecological footprinting (EF) and use of LCA in footprinting and explore the use of water footprinting.  Opportunities to extend the concept of footprinting through new application areas are discussed including social input-output analysis, the use of geo-demographics, and "big data."

    The Journal of Industrial Ecology is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal, owned by Yale University, published by Wiley-Blackwell and headquartered at the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
     
    Articles will be freely downloadable for a limited time at: http://jie.yale.edu/footprint

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    Reid J. Lifset, Assoc. Dir.<x-tab>     </x-tab><x-tab>         </x-tab><x-tab>         </x-tab> School of Forestry & Env. Studies
    Industrial Environmental Mgmt. Program<x-tab>  </x-tab>Yale University
    Editor, Journal of Industrial Ecology<x-tab>   </x-tab><x-tab>         </x-tab>195 Prospect Street
    203-432-6949 (tel)  -5912 (fax)<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab>         </x-tab><x-tab>         </x-tab>New Haven, CT   06511 USA
    reid.lifset@yale.edu

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