Footprint

What's missing? Invitations to the sustainability transformation

Mathis Wackernagel

www.FootprintNetwork.org

Hosted by SAGE

What is necessary?

How can we make it happen?

What is necessary?

VERSUS

How can we make it happen?

1) What is necessary?

• Identify: Minimum condition for success

• Backcast: what would it take?

• Define: Milestones of success

• Commitment versus Attachment

2) How can we make it happen?

• How to create these conditions? Language creates something out of nothing

• WE.. You cannot alone• Get people involved (Tom Sawyer), get them

engaged rather than concerned

• You cannot win an argument• Commitment versus Attachment

Clarity and Friendship is not (necessarily) a contradiction

1. Minimum condition for success

2. How to create these conditions

Bioproductive segments

18% Biologically Productive Land

11%Deserts, Ice Caps and Barren Land

67% Low-productivityOcean

4%BiologicallyProductive Ocean

22%

One acre

People vs. nature

?

Personal planetoid

Global average availability of bioproductive Land + Sea = 4.5 global acres/person

Implication of two-child families:

2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 2125 Grandparents (51-75 years) 1,000 2,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 Parents (26-50 years) 2,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 Kids (0-25 years) 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 TOTAL (million) 6,000 8,000 9,000 9,000 9,000 9,000

Two-child families

Implication of one-child families:

2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 2125 Grandparents (51-75 years) 1,000 2,000 3,000 1,500 750 375 Parents (26-50 years) 2,000 3,000 1,500 750 375 188 Kids (0-25 years) 3,000 1,500 750 375 188 94 TOTAL (million) 6,000 6,500 5,250 2,625 1,313 656

One-child families

Catalyzing Change

• Not Argument…but

• Invitation!...

• Benefit versus features

• Two helpful rules

Communication dominated by 2 phenomena

• People want to look good

• Who is really deciding?– The judge in your head

• I don’t know why we want to look good or have a judge..

• Powerful forces, if recognized help to be more inviting; if ignore, we fail.

Implications

• Serves as a test for our communication

• Helps us choose between being right and being inviting

Think: Invitation

• Avoiding an argument by building on an incontrovertible, authentic statement

• Offering to contribute (not about me or you, but us)

• Being responsible for their satisfaction

• Honoring their choice (embrace the no!)

How have we applied the principles?

Building a vision:

• What is success?

• Milestones?

• Committed to research question, but not to particular method

Inviting Partners

1. Transparent method

2. Common stewardship of national accounts

3. No exclusion ™

4. Joint review of method

5. International support from science and policy

6. Development of standards

7. Amplifying opportunities

Cat on Roman foot

www.FootprintNetwork.org

Mathis@FootprintNetwork.org