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Worldwide growing demand for food, alongside limited resources and accelerating environmental changes, suggests that future global food security may rely at least partially on unconventional land and production systems, such as built infrastructure located in desert areas. This paper analyses the environmental footprints (water, soil, carbon, material, solid waste, and ecological) of a tomato production system in passive greenhouses, a low-tech growing structure with no artificial heating or cooling. We collected data from 10 farms in the hyper-arid region of the Central Arava, Israel. Our analysis covers the four stages of production up to the overseas export destination and investigates the system's direct and indirect biophysical interactions. The average footprint of a ton of tomatoes is 1,040 kg/t (Material footprint), 94 m3/t (Water footprint), 72 m2/t (Land footprint), 952 kgCO2eq/t (Carbon footprint), 442 kg/t solid waste (SWF) and 243 gha/t (Ecological footprint). Our results indicate that the environmental hotspots can be attributed to universal factors–water production, fossil energy, fertilizers, structures, and road transport, alongside case-specific elements–soil, evaporation, location and the human-factor. Some differences were found when examining the full range of footprints within farms. No correlation was found between the farm's yields and materials inputs or carbon footprint, pointing to the human factor. We discuss the advantages and limitations of the local production system and proposed some improvement strategies.

Despite a growing number of national-scale ecosystem service (ES) assessments, few studies consider the impacts of ES use and consumption beyond national or regional boundaries. Interregional ES flows ecosystem services imported from and exported to other countries are rarely analyzed and their importance for global sustainability is little known. Here, we provide a first multi-ES quantification of a nation's use of ES from abroad. We focus on ES flows that benefit the population in Germany but are supplied outside German territory. We employ a conceptual framework recently developed to systematically quantify interregional ES flows. We address four types of interregional ES flows with: (i) biophysical flows of traded goods: cocoa import for consumption; (ii) flows mediated by migratory species: migration of birds providing pest control; (iii) passive biophysical flows: flood control along transboundary watersheds; and (iv) information flows: China's giant panda loan to the Berlin Zoo. We determined that: (i) Ivory Coast and Ghana alone supply around 53% of Germany's cocoa while major negative consequences for biodiversity occurred in Cameroon and Ecuador; (ii) Africa´s humid and sub-humid climate zones are important habitats for the majority of migratory bird species that provide natural pest control services in agricultural areas in Germany; (iii) Upstream watersheds outside the country add an additional 64% flood regulation services nationally, while Germany exports 40% of flood regulation services in neighboring, downstream countries; (iv) Information flows transported by the pandas were mainly related to political aspects and - contrary to our expectations - considerably less on biological and natural aspects. We discuss the implications of these results for international resource management policy and governance. (c) 2020 The Authors Thomas Kastner was supported by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), project no. ESR17-014. Laura Lopez-Hoffman acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards DEB-1118975 and DEB-1518359. Support for Liu's time was provided by US National Science Foundation and Michigan AgBioResearch. Javier Martínez-López acknowledges the support of the Spanish Government through María de Maeztu excellence accreditation 2018-2021 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714). Sarah Wolff was supported by the European Research Council grant GLOLAND (grant no. 311819)

Modeling and measuring both potential and actual urban greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigations can serve as a foundation for urban sustainability management. A growing number of studies have analyzed various aspects of GHG emissions from the use of private vehicles, emphasizing the significant share they represent of overall emissions, and also exploring measures to reduce these emissions. Commuting to and from work is a significant form of urban travel. Most existing analyses have focused on urban transportation-related emissions at the overall urban scale. Much less research has been published concerning fine-scale emissions analysis of urban commute patterns and specific commuting routes. This manuscript presents a detailed analysis of commute related GHG emissions from private vehicles used by the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Israel) residents. The analysis found that 60% of the overall urban private vehicles related emissions can be attributed to commuting, emitting ~215,000 t CO2e annually. We analyzed GHG emissions related to 257 inter-city and 64 commute routes within the city, ranging between 100 and 5600 t CO2e annually. Potential scenarios for GHG mitigation are also presented showing that relatively mild technological, behavioral and policy changes can potentially save 10–51% of emissions related to commute within the city, amounting to 3000–17,000 t CO2e annually. Findings show that commute-route-specific carbon quantification can be used as a tool for socio-spatial tailored policies, advancing urban GHG mitigation.

Most consumption activities are related, at least to some degree, to households. A nalyzing households' metabolism - the direct and indirect materials and energy flows and its byproducts - and identifying key shaping factors of that metabolism can serve as the foundation for examining various measures for environmental management. Recent research reviews emphasized several important issues, limitations of existing metabolism studies, that need to be considered and overcome as part of the further development of households' metabolism analysis including: methods, focus, scale, analysis, and potential environmental management implementation. This article aims contributing to the growing household metabolism scientific literature by illustrating directions to advance some of the identified issues and limitations. It focuses on the Israeli household sector as a case study. Following the identified limitations, the analysis includes the flow of materials, water, land and selected byproducts including greenhouse gases and air pollutants. It integrates the analysis of specific households metabolism components (food, electricity and transportation related materials) with the national scale. It explores the contribution of specific factors (e.g., income, household size) and various lifestyles (e.g., young or old low-income couples, large wealthy mature households) with demographic factors of the overall population (e.g., the share of households consisting of a young couple or elderly people in the overall national household metabolism). Such integration can contribute to advancing measures relevant to specific socio-economic factors and lifestyles and can contribute to changing the metabolism and advancing the use of this important research approach as a mean for advancing sustainability.

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in the conservation of electricity of the household sector as consumption rates grow constantly worldwide. To date, consumption based studies have either focused on households' overall use of electricity at the national or specific group level, or analyzed specific socio-spatial consumption shaping factors. Studies that followed the first approach can signal the magnitude of electricity consumption, analyze trends and explore the contribution of advancing various measures. Studies that followed the latter approach can be used as a base for advancing consumption behavioral changes based on specific circumstances. This manuscript integrates both approaches for the case of the state of Israel, it therefore allows examining the effect of different variables on electricity consumption of the entire population. The manuscript presents an analysis of electricity consumption of 30,000 households. By quantifying the overall use of electricity by households influenced by different socio-spatial shaping factors, the manuscript identifies the share of specific types of households and various lifestyles (e.g., young families, wealthy households) out of the overall national use of electricity. Such analysis can then support policy measures by aiming to the socio-spatial characteristics of specific types of households, which can contribute the most to advancing the overall national energy efficiency efforts and can also identify future scenarios of household electricity demand which can then be addressed in the future.

In an interconnected world, the ‘food system’ sustainability of any given region is increasingly dependent on ecosystem services originated from supporting regions in different parts of the world. However, commonly used research approaches, such as place based ecosystem service assessments and interregional biophysical accounting, have limited capacity to capture the complex interactions across regions. This research addresses this gap by integrating a global biophysical accounting of food crops with its related local ecosystem dis-services. It combines agricultural and ecosystem indicators to describe different classes of biophysical pressures and potential dis-services from growing 4 key agricultural staples exported to Israel from different agricultural areas around the world. Each class stands as a ‘functional region’ in which either a trade-off or a synergy exists between agricultural efficiency and environmental impact. The research finds that over half of Israel’s crops supply was produced in areas with high soil loss potential, and almost 15% of it originates from areas with high water scarcity. It implies that changes to Israel’s supply sources have the potential to reduce consumption related impacts on ecosystem services. The functional regions typology may be used as a global road map mediating interregional flows assessments with place-based ecosystem service assessments.

Conserving and managing global natural capital requires an understanding of the complexity of flows ofecosystem services across geographic boundaries. Failing to understand and to incorporate these flowsinto national and international ecosystem assessments leads to incomplete and potentially skewed conclusions,impairing society’s ability to identify sustainable management and policy choices. In this paper,we synthesise existing knowledge and develop a conceptual framework for analysing interregionalecosystem service flows. We synthesise the types of such flows, the characteristics of sending and receivingsocio-ecological systems, and the impacts of ecosystem service flows on interregional sustainability.Using four cases (trade of certified coffee, migration of northern pintails, flood protection in the Danubewatershed, and information on giant pandas), we test the conceptual framework and show how anenhanced understanding of interregional telecouplings in socio-ecological systems can inform ecosystemservice-based decision making and governance with respect to sustainability goals.&nbsp

Maintaining food security and environmental integrity over time requires a transition towards sustainable food systems. This paper analyzes different dimensions of national food supply sustainability on a global scale. By focusing on four food staples: wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans, the analysis identifies production regions that are more or less environmentally sustainable. It explores the dependence of different countries on calories supplied by these regions. These four staples' production requires 648 million hectares of cropland and about 559 cubic kilometers of irrigation water. It also leads to several environmental impacts, including potential soil loss and species loss. Yet, these impacts and pressures are spread unevenly across agricultural systems. We find that over one-third of the global calorie intake originates from regions with a high per ton environmental impacts. Although most consumed calories are from domestic sources, traded calories mostly originate from environmentally suitable production regions, increasing importing countries' food supply sustainability. This analysis also reveals interregional tradeoffs, where food imports into one region (increased food provision) is associated with high environmental impact in production regions. Further, this typology allows identifying an elusive, often overlooked interregional connection. That is the potential loss of future ecosystem service flow from countries with the lower gross domestic product per capita and high biodiversity. To date, those countries rely primarily on domestic staple production, which puts pressure on vulnerable local ecosystems. Species loss in those regions reduces the potential future interregional flows of genetic material. Alternatively, conservation combined with food imports can maintain diversity and the potential flow of genetic material from those regions. The functional regions typology provides a complete assessment of the interregional connections that make up the global food system. Therefore, it is useful for informing policy analysts and policymakers of a broader collection of stakeholders regarding the local environment. It also provides essential information about the suitability of different policy mechanisms to govern interregional systems. Future research shall expand the functional regions' typology to include additional environmental and human-related (e.g., technological), to cover more crops, and to account for other food categories, such as meat.

In an urban world human well-being and global sustainability are connected to cities and the way they function. However, the ability and political willingness of local authorities and urbanites to take action to significantly reduce urban negative biophysical impacts is limited. This manuscript presents the results of a research which aimed to examine the extent to which existing and potential measures within and outside urban boundaries can reduce the urban ecological footprint and advance urban sustainability. It focuses on the town of Ra'anana, Israel, as a case study examined over a decade. It identifies the contribution of different urban activities (e.g., transportation, food consumption etc.) and stakeholders (e.g., urban residents, municipality, the state etc.) to the changes of the urban footprint over time. It then examines the potential contributions of selected measures (e.g., plans, technology implementation, behavioral change, etc.) within and outside the town's boundaries to minimize the urban footprint. The research joins a small group of studies that have examined urban footprints over time and an even smaller number that tried to examine the potential footprint reductions from sustainability actions taken at different spatial scales.

The IPAT equation developed in the early 1970s by Ehrlich and Holdren suggests that the impact (I) of society on the environment is associated with population size (P) coupled with manner of function (f), which is shaped by elements such as affluence (A) and available technology (T). To date, most studies that have used the IPAT framework have either focused on its conceptual idea or employed it quantitatively at national and international scales. Few studies have explored the sub-national/regional scale, and none have focused on the local/community scale. This paper employs the IPAT framework for the case of Israel’s urban indigenous Bedouin society of the Negev. The paper aims to highlight IPAT’s strength in analyzing the array of internal and external factors that contribute to the making of an environmental crisis in Bedouin towns; a crisis with dire effects on public health and residents’ quality-of-life. The paper describes the current environmental situation and identifies major policy interventions and actions taken by government ministries and civil organizations. It introduces a revised and extended IPAT theoretical equation [including such elements as behavior (B), social communality (Sc) and Governmental policy (Po)] as an analytical framework for various factors associated with the Bedouin urban environmental crisis. Finally, the paper suggests new directions for intervention based on addressing the different factors contained within the human–environment impact equation.

As the world urbanizes, the role of cities in determining sustainability outcomes grows in importance. Cities are the dominant form of human habitat, and most of the world's resources are either directly or indirectly consumed in cities. Sustainable city analysis and management requires understanding the demands a city places on a wider geographical area and its ecological resource base. We present a detailed, integrated urban metabolism of residential consumption and ecological footprint analysis of the Vancouver metropolitan region for the year 2006. Our overall goal is to demonstrate the application of a bottom-up ecological footprint analysis using an urban metabolism framework at a metropolitan, regional scale. Our specific objectives are: a) to quantify energy and material consumption using locally generated data and b) to relate these data to global ecological carrying capacity. Although water is the largest material flow through Metro Vancouver (424,860,000 m(3)), it has the smallest ecological footprint (23,100 gha). Food (2,636,850 tonnes) contributes the largest component to the ecological footprint (4,514,400 gha) which includes crop and grazing land as well as carbon sinks required to sequester emissions from food production and distribution. Transportation fuels (3,339,000 m(3)) associated with motor vehicle operation and passenger air travel comprises the second largest material flow through the region and the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions (7,577,000 tonnes). Transportation also accounts for the second largest component of the EF (2,323,200 gha). Buildings account for the largest electricity flow (17,515,150 MWh) and constitute the third largest component of the EF (1,779,240 gha). Consumables (2,400,000 tonnes) comprise the fourth largest component of the EF (1,414,440 gha). Metro Vancouver's total Ecological Footprint in 2006 was 10,071,670 gha, an area approximately 36 times larger than the region itself. The EFA reveals that cropland and carbon sinks (forested land required to sequester carbon dioxide emissions) account for 90% of Metro Vancouver's overall demand for biocapacity. The per capita ecological footprint is 4.76 gha, nearly three times the per capita global supply of biocapacity. Note that this value excludes national government services that operate outside the region and could account for up to an additional 2 gha/ca.

At the beginning of the 21st century imports of agricultural and food commodities have become a major part of many nations’ food baskets. Indeed the global food system has several merits for nations, businesses and individual consumers’ well-being. However, as increasing evidence suggests that we are approaching an era of climate change and scarcity of cheap energy sources the sustainability of that system must be examined. One part of any food commodity chain is its ‘food miles’ – the distance the commodity travels from point of production to point of consumption, the required energy and resulting emissions. This paper presents a 1 year ‘snapshot’ of Canada’s total import related food miles. It presents an analysis of the distance imported foods traveled from around the world to major points of consumption in Canada and documents the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions related to those imports. It presents both a macro scale picture of the equivalent emissions related to transportation of imported food and a micro scale picture which focuses on specific commodities consumed in various parts of the country. It then discusses policy implications for food sustainability. Overall the research highlights that about 30% of the agricultural and food commodities consumed in Canada are imported, resulting in ‘food miles’ of over 61 billion tonnes km, leading to annual emissions of 3.3 million metric tonnes of CO 2 . Of the various agriculture and food commodities studied, fruits and vegetables had the highest food miles related emissions.

This paper develops a theoretical interregional approach to sustainability in an interconnected world. We make the case that achieving sustainability – living equitably within the limits of living systems – requires the recognition of our ecological interdependence and interconnectedness across regions and the resultant need for supra-regional policy to shape local resilience and global sustainability. Approaching sustainability conscious of interregional connections reveals that: (1) virtually every significant human population or country lives, in part, on energy/material flows to and from distant places elsewhere around the world, (2) production, consumption and policy decisions in any given locale have the potential to create unseen unsustainable burdens on connected productive ecosystems in distant locales, (3) ecological change in one region has the potential to jeopardize the sustainability of other regions, and (4) society in almost any region has interests in sustaining the vitality of ecosystems in other regions. We highlight a range of supra-regional ecological linkages and discuss the types of interregional feedback and policy responses needed. We highlight how such an quasi-global focus not only provides further insight into the social and ecological challenges global society is facing, but also reveals places for positive human intervention and leadership in the name of sustainability and resilience.

Human societies depend for their survival on goods and services provided by both local and global ecosystems. For most of history, people used mainly local resources. Increasingly, however, globalization and trade enable consuming populations everywhere to support themselves on the output of distant ecosystems. This is potentially problematic because of global change and because the spatial separation of material production (including resource exploitation) from consumption eliminates the direct negative feedback that normally occurs when people dependent on local ecosystems degrade those ecosystems. With spatial separation comes psychological separation. Modern consumers remain generally unconscious of their growing reliance on biophysical goods and services produced half a world away and see no connection between their consumer lifestyles and distant ecological consequences. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to raise a cautionary flag about unfettered trade and to show the value of accounting for trade-related physical flows and their impacts on natural capital in sustainability analyses. Using the United States as an example, we present an analytical method that can locate and measure the ecosystem area embodied in any population's imports of renewable resources. We quantify U.S. imports from specific countries around the world; we estimate the area of terrestrial ecosystems in those countries devoted to consumers in the U.S. and we highlight both increasing U.S. imports and their potential impact on extra-territorial ecosystems. This method creates indirect (conceptual) feedback between consumption and ecosystems integrity which we hope will partially replace the physical feedback neutralized by globalization. Such analyses can help generate public and decision makers’ awareness of both their dependence and their impacts on, distant natural capital stocks. This in turn should increase interest in establishing improved co-management regimes to maintain the stability and reliability of such now obligatory relationships.

As the world economy ‘globalizes’, trade has become a major mechanism by which much of the human population supports its needs. While trade in resource commodities (natural income) can increase the well-being of people in both exporting and importing countries, it can also lead to depletion of natural capital and the loss of ecosystems integrity. In recent years, various researchers have attempted to address this problem using a consumption-based perspective on ecological change. Their work shows that the loss of ecosystem integrity in almost any region of the world can be attributed to both local and international consumer demand. This paper illustrates the utility of modified eco-footprint analysis in assessing export-related ecological change in Costa Rica. We quantify ecological footprint of consumers around the world on the productive ecosystems of Costa Rica, document the changing character of this footprint and highlight some of the linkages between production for export in Costa Rica and ecological degradation. We then discuss the implications of the increasing trade-based entanglement of nations for ecosystems and global sustainability.

Modern urban life is characterized by the consumption of materials and energy, which are imported from all over the world and discharge waste that in many cases has a negative impact on ecosystems far from the cities in which they consumed. Indeed, cities cannot survive without worldwide hinterlands for resources and emissions sequestration. The ecological footprint (EF) concept provides valuable insights into the human appropriation of resources relative to earth’s carrying capacity, and therefore it enables us to compare human demands with nature’s supply and provides an indicator of human ecological sustainability. An attempt was made to calculate the EF of Ra’anana, Israel as a case study, to compare the EF-value with the expected for ecological sustainability and to emphasize the dependence on overseas ecosystems. Ra’anana, a town of 67,300 inhabitants in the year 2002, is considered a ‘dormitory town’ with a high quality of life. The EF was calculated using mainly the component method. The calculated EF for Ra’anana is 4.0 ha/resident which means that the required hinterland, located all over the world, is nearly 180 times the size of the town. The town’s EF is twice the value expected for sustainability on a global scale. We draw several scenarios in order to reduce the EF. On a national basis as well as with the town case study, electric energy, food and waste can be reduced and in turn would have a dramatic impact on the EF.

Ecological footprint analysis (EFA) can be used by cities to account for their on-going demands on global renewable resources. To date, EFA has not been fully implemented as an urban policy and planning tool in part due to limitations of local data availability. In this paper we focus on the material consumption component of the urban ecological footprint and identify the ‘component, solid waste life cycle assessment approach’ as one that overcomes data limitations by using data many cities regularly collect: municipal, solid waste composition data which serves as a proxy for material consumption. The approach requires energy use and/or carbon dioxide emissions data from process LCA studies as well as agricultural and forest land data for calculation of a material’s ecological footprint conversion value. We reviewed the process LCA literature for twelve materials commonly consumed in cities and determined ecological footprint conversion values for each. We found a limited number of original LCA studies but were able to generate a range of values for each material. Our set of values highlights the importance for cities to identify both the quantities consumed and per unit production impacts of a material. Some materials like textiles and aluminum have high ecological footprints but make up relatively smaller proportions of urban waste streams than products like paper and diapers. Local government use of the solid waste LCA approach helps to clearly identify the ecological loads associated with the waste they manage on behalf of their residents. This direct connection can be used to communicate to citizens about stewardship, recycling and ecologically responsible consumption choices that contribute to urban sustainability.