Actual land demand of Austria 1926-2000: a variation on Ecological Footprint assessments

This paper assesses the area demand of Austria in the 75 years from 1926 to 2000. In order to estimate the area of arable land, pastures and forests needed to sustain Austria's socio-economic metabolism I used country-specific yields, contrary to the conventional Ecological Footprint approach that expresses its results in global average hectares. This study explicitly assesses the countries of origin of all imported biomass products. Forest areas were evaluated using two methods. In the 'production' approach country-specific felling rates were used, in the 'sustainable yield approach' wood increment per country was taken as a proxy for maximum sustainable yield. Austria's overall area demand is considerably larger than the biologically productive area of its own territory during the entire time period, mainly due to fossil fuel consumption. If only biomass use and built-up land are taken into account, both the production and the sustainable yield approach show an almost constant area demand from 1926 to 2000. In the production approach Austria's area demand is slightly larger than Austria's bioproductive area, in the sustainable yield approach it is slightly smaller. The area needed to support Austria's imports is mainly located in neighbouring countries. In earlier years eastern European countries (e.g., Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Serbia) play a major role, whereas in the recent decades the EU-15 countries are the main providers of Austrian area imports. In 2000, the area required to maintain imports is of a similar size as domestically used land, except for grasslands, demonstrating the dependence of Austria's socio-economic metabolism on regional or even global markets. This study shows that area demand depends on two factors: consumption level and yields per hectare. In the case of Austria, considerable increases in consumption were counterbalanced by yield surges. Indicators of area demand should therefore be complemented by indicators that evaluate the environmental effects of land use. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.