From our Co-Chair: On Winnable Strategies for the Transition
"I think that as soon as we start talking about hope, we're talking like spectators. A football player standing on the field doesn't ask whether he has hope. No, we want to win! We want to win! What does it take to win? That's the interesting question."
Mathis Wackernagel, Co-Chair of the Transition Valuation Project
In a recent interview, Mathis Wackernagel speaks with Swiss Radio. Listen in here (audio in German.
Mathis Wackernagel, the Basel-born developer of the Ecological Footprint concept with William Rees in the 1990s, helped define a key metric for planetary impacts and significantly influenced sustainable development. The Ecological Footprint measures how much of the Earth's natural resources a person, community, or country consumes relative to what nature can regenerate.
Wackernagel traces his interest in sustainability to his childhood. Influenced by parents and grandparents who experienced World War II, he grew up aware of issues of resource scarcity and security. He recalls learning that Switzerland could produce only about seven months' worth of food domestically during the war, making resource management a major concern.
A particularly formative experience was the 1973 oil crisis, which he experienced as an 11-year-old. Switzerland introduced car-free Sundays, and Wackernagel remembers them as a paradise for children, who could cycle freely on empty roads. The experience convinced him that society could and should move beyond dependence on fossil fuels.
Wackernagel explains that the idea for the Ecological Footprint grew from observations he made while spending holidays on farms. He noticed that a farm could support only a limited number of cows; when there were too many, resources became scarce and production declined. He later applied this simple principle to humanity as a whole, asking: How much productive land and natural capacity are required to support an individual's lifestyle and consumption?
The report highlights the global impact of his work. According to science journalist Kathrin Zöfel, few researchers create concepts that the public widely recognises. The Ecological Footprint helped transform the abstract idea of planetary limits into something tangible and easy to understand.
Wackernagel also introduced the concept of Earth Overshoot Day, the date each year when humanity's resource consumption exceeds what Earth can regenerate during that year. He notes that in the year discussed, Earth Overshoot Day fell on 30 July. He mentions that this coincided with the hottest day ever recorded in Basel, which he describes as a "poetically tragic coincidence," while emphasising that the two events are not directly linked.
Today, Wackernagel lives in the United States and travels extensively to speak about sustainability, although he remains closely connected to Basel through family, friends, and professional engagements. Recently, he attended Basel's Sustainable Development Goals Day, where representatives from government, business, and academia discussed sustainability challenges.