The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) organized a Footprint Family workshop, 14-16 November 2017, Ispra (Italy), bringing together specialists from JRC and 11 invited international external experts on footprints. Footprints covered were the ecological, carbon, land, water, nitrogen, phosphorus, energy, material and biodiversity footprints. ESPP joined as expert and brought in knowledge and ideas from the phosphorus footprint perspective. The workshop aimed at creating an internationally recognized scientific panel to discuss synergies and conceptual differences between the different footprints and methods/data used, and to set the basis for footprints related to food production and consumption in the EU. Footprints are analysis and communication tools to assess the impact is of a person, product, company, sector, country in terms of resource use (depletion) and environmental pressure (pollution). The experts concluded that a combination of footprints (footprint family) would provide additional value for researchers, consumers and policymakers to work on sustainable production, consumption and waste management, with a clear link to environmental EU directives and the new UN Sustainable Development Goals. Furthermore it became clear that whereas for example the ecological, land, carbon and water footprint are well developed, for phosphorus and nitrogen there is a strong need for further development, in particular to take into account the virtual phosphorus consumption by imported products. Input on phosphorus and nitrogen footprints and their further development can be sent to
Outcomes of the finished EU research project One Planet Economy Network (OPEN) that focussed on the challenges Footprint Family as well www.oneplaneteconomynetwork.org
Running Our Phosphorus Future research project will cover the phosphorus footprint http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=NE%2FP008798%2F1
See nitrogen footprint work in the Our Nutrient World report, prepared by the Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM) in collaboration with the International Nitrogen Initiative http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/500700/1/N500700BK.pdf
“Nitrogen footprints: past, present and future” Galloway et al. 2014, IOPScience http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/11/115003
Website Global Footprint Network www.footprintnetwork.org