Britain starts eating the planet on Sunday 15 April

Latest figures reveal Britain’s rising global interdependence as the nation goes into ecological debt on 15 April

Research from nef (the new economics foundation) reveals that on Sunday 15 April this year, the UK in effect stops relying on its own natural resources to support itself and starts to ‘live off’ the rest of the world.

At current UK levels of consumption our ‘ecological debt day’ – the day we begin living beyond our environmental means – falls only a third of the way through the year and has crept ever earlier over the last four decades. 

These latest findings build on a report, released by nef last year which exposed, for the first time, the sharp rise in how the UK depends on the rest of world, and how the burden of the Britain’s high-consuming lifestyle is exported internationally.  

The UK Interdependence report: How the world sustains the nation’s lifestyles and the price it pays, published by nef in April 2006, mapped out the depth and breadth of our increasing interdependence and the price the planet pays.

The clearest demonstration of our failure to live within our environmental means comes from looking at the day in a typical calendar year when we start to live off the rest of the world. The latest available data reveals that:

• At current levels of natural resource use in the UK, the average person goes into ecological debt on 15 April.
• As our total consumption grows, the day on which we begin consuming beyond our environmental means moves earlier in the year. In 1961 it was 9 July. By 1981 Britain’s ecological debt day was reached almost two months earlier on 14 May.
• Last year, the average person in the UK went into ecological debt on 16 April.

“On one level there is absolutely nothing wrong with importing goods and services to meet our needs; but our eyes are bigger than our planet. If the whole world understandably wanted to copy our levels of consumption, we would need the resources of more than three planets like Earth. And, we only have one. Our economy and way of life need to make contact with the real world before we eat accidentally eat it whole.” says Andrew Simms, nef’s policy director.

New data from nef and Global Footprint Network member Best Foot Forward shows that, our ecologically wasteful trading system is heading in the wrong direction.

As pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because of climate change increases, much of our trade seems highly inefficient. Identical products are being shipped backwards and forwards with heavy environmental costs. For example, in 2006:

• We imported 586 tonnes of sweet biscuits, waffles and wafers, gingerbread and the like and exported just a little more, 669 tonnes.
• We sent 1,445 tonnes of sugar confectionary (including white chocolate and excluding chewing gum) to Sweden, and brought in 1,632 tonnes from the same country.
• We imported 14,137 tonnes of chocolate covered waffles and wafers (small packs) and exported 15,856 tonnes.

“The fact that the UK is a net importer of materials and is using up energy at an unsustainable rate should be of concern to all businesses. Damaging the ecosystems upon which we all depend is very short term thinking. To survive and profit in a future resource-constrained world all organisations must reduce their footprint”, says, Craig Simmons of Best Foot Forward.

And, the latest trade data on three particularly environmentally destructive commodities, soya, palm oil and tropical woods, reveal just how much of an impact our high consuming lifestyles are having on global biodiversity with potentially devastating impacts for the planet.

The growth of palms for oil - for biodiesel for the European market is now the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia, for example, and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild.   Research by Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics that because of deforestation and drainage of peat-lands, every tonne of palm oil created in South-East Asia results in up to 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions - 10 times as much as conventional petroleum.

• In 2005, we imported 652,110 tonnes of palm oil into the UK, 389,482 tonnes of which was imported from South-East Asia.  Our consumption of palm oil from this region alone causing almost 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions – equivalent to 2.5 per cent of emissions from the UK.

And, as scientists gathered at Oxford University at the end of Marchexpressed concern that the combination of forest fires, drought, deforestation, changes in land use (such as soya production) and global warming will combine to push the Amazon over a "tipping point" into a cycle of destruction, the latest trade data reveals how UK consumers are potentially fuelling the destruction of the Amazon.

• We imported 774,623 tonnes of soya into the UK in 2005, almost 70 per cent of this (520,814 tonnes) from Brazil

Finally, just days after revelations of the devastating impact that the trade in tropical woods is having on the Congo forests, the latest trade data reveals that in 2005, we imported 10,998 tonnes of tropical woods from around the world.

“The UK’s growing interdependence with the rest of the world is a fact and an opportunity. But we are abusing it. By living so far beyond our environmental means and running up ecological debts we commit two wrongs. We deny millions who go without the chances for a better life and we put the planet’s life support mechanisms in peril,” adds nef policy director Andrew Simms,

The UK Interdependence report: How the world sustains the nation’s lifestyles and the price it pays

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	related
	at nef The Observer: 'Eco-debt' Britain will have consumed this year's share of resources by tonight
	Publications The UK Interdependence Report: How the world sustains the nation's lifestyles and the price it pays

	resources
	Best Foot Forward

	contacts
	Andrew Simms