Ecological footprint calculators try to measure the amount of biologically productive land required to sustain the consumption needs of an individual or group of individuals. While it can be a useful tool for gauging the general consumption patterns of a country, and for creating dialogue between governments and their people, it cannot be used as the primary indicator of a country`s sustainability because most footprint calculators today often base their calculations on incomplete or missing data.
For example, the footprint calculator from the Center for Sustainable Economy does not distinguish between whether the resources extracted to make the products we use are managed in a sustainable way. Even if fish are caught in a sustainable way in Canada, there is no guarantee that this fish will not be flown to another country to be filleted and then flown back to North America to be consumed in a sushi restaurant. Thus, the life-cycle of products or resources are an important consideration when looking at whether countries consume in a sustainable way; the obvious complexities involved in looking at product life-cycles make it impossible to incorporate into a simple footprint calculator.
Another reason why a footprint calculator should not be used as a primary indicator of a country`s sustainability is that it does not consider the disparities between the global north and the global south. Countries in the global south are often criticized for creating pollution havens and for not having institutions in place that can process wastes and recyclable material. Unfortunately, ecological footprint calculators do not consider that some countries in the global south cannot afford to have programs that would boost their sustainability score, or that often, industries in the global south provide for the consumption needs of the global north.
If an ecological footprint calculator was used by the UN as the primary indicator for measuring sustainability, it would cast a negative light on countries in the global south and would be another way that global institutions enforce a green agenda (protection of natural habitats and resources, sustainability) on a population concerned more with the brown agenda (health, access to resources, etc.).
