Ecological Creditor and Debtor Initiative, developed by the Global Footprint

Network, seeks not to discourage global trade but, rather, to enable

countries to see the benefit in reducing their resource dependence on the

one hand, and increasing or maintaining ecological reserves on the other.

Understanding this new distinction of wealth can help to lead climate

negotiations and climate policy on the more productive path, empowering all countries,

whether ecological debtors or creditors, to implement more aggressive sustainability policies.

Global Footprint Network’s Mediterranean Initiative, launched in June

2010 in partnership with WWF’s Mediterranean Programme Office,

UNESCO, Plan Bleu and Tour Du Valat, is an effort to bring leaders together

to develop regional approach to managing resource dependence and biocapacity.

Among the goals of the Mediterranean Initiative is to bring the reality of

resource constrains into the national and international policy debate.

The initiative will provide decision makers with key Ecological Footprint

and biocapacity data to inform policy issues. It aims to help leaders to understand

how they can work collectively to manage resource consumption and natural capital.

Ecological assets are becoming the decisive competitive factors in global

affairs. Countries that know their ecological assets, manage them,

protect them and use them wisely, will be better off. The Global

Footprint Network (GFN) is working to create the future in which the

Ecological Footprint will be globally accepted metric, as prominent as the GDP.

In 2005, GFN has launched Ten-in-Ten campaign with the goal of institutionalizing

the Ecological Footprint in at least ten key national governments by 2015. GFN

has received solid start: more than 35 nations have engaged with the organization

directly. Seventeen nations have completed reviews of the Footprint, while Japan,

Switzerland, UAE, Ecuador, Finland, Scotland, Wales have formally adopted it, and more...