Ecological Indicators
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind
Department of International and Theoretical Economics, Kautz Gyula Economics Faculty, Szchenyi Istvn University, Egyetem tr 1, 9026, Gyor,
Hungary
Department of Corporate Economics and Regional Development, Georgikon Faculty, University of Pannonia, Dek Ferenc u. 16, 8360, Keszthely, Hungary
Department of Economic Analyses, Kautz Gyula Economics Faculty, Szchenyi Istvn University, Egyetem tr 1, 9026, Gyor,
Hungary
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 6 December 2015
Received in revised form 4 May 2016
Accepted 20 July 2016
Keywords:
GDP
IPAT
Sustainable development
Ecological footprint
Economic growth
a b s t r a c t
The ecological price of economic growth is a heavily debated issue, where ideologies often neglect factual
information. In this paper, through the relationship of the ecological footprint and GDP, we examine
the tendencies of eco-efciency in the rst decade of the 21st century. We conclude that the average
ecological footprint intensity of countries have improved signicantly in the given period. In 2009, 50
percent less area was needed to produce a unit of GDP. Many countries could reach the so-called strong
decoupling these countries could increase GDP while decreasing the ecological footprint in absolute
terms. We also repeated the analysis of a scientic article published in 2004. We managed to update data
and identify ecologically positive tendencies. In ten years, the average of the worlds ecological footprint
intensity has signicantly improved, it halved all in all. We found that 90 percent of the countries started
to move to the direction of sustainable development. Among the studied 131 countries, 40 experienced
strong decoupling (absolute decrease of resource use), in 77 countries weak decoupling occurred (relative
decrease of resource use), and there were only 14 countries, where no decoupling could be observed
(relative increase of resource use).
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The crisis of the developed worlds nancial markets forced
the introspection of economics, which has been strongly criticized
by the representatives of the alternative and heterodox schools,
as well as the media, the general public and economic decisionmakers (Bod Pter, 2013). Relations, contradictions or compatibility
of economic growth and sustainable development is traditionally
seen as the most important questions to which theoretical answers
and practical solutions must be found. One of the most well-known
analyses on this issue can be found in the report to Club of Rome
(The Limits to Growth) outlining a number of questionable scenarios for mankind (Meadows et al., 2005). Krozer (2016) explains
how the growth of the income and better environmental qualities go hand in hand, and reviews the drivers and the barriers
to sustainable innovation on the basis of real-life cases. Detailed
analysis of the interaction of GDP, ecological footprint and happiness is also a hot topic. Kocsis (2010) for example estimates the
effects and highlights the consequences of different development
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: szigetic@sze.hu (C. Szigeti).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.07.034
1470-160X/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
112
113
(1)
1
4
GDP data
EF/GDP ratio (T)
T median (Md)
Average GDP (PPP
$/capita)
Present research
139 countries
(1998)
139 countries
4.86
6920
222 countries
(2009)
143 countries
2.27
14588
countries with low EF intensity can be characterized by high ecoefciency. The basic data of the research is summarized in Table 1.
4. Results and discussion
Examining the relationship between GDP and EF, we can see
that countries with higher-incomes typically tend to have a larger
size of the ecological footprint per capita. In both years, we found
countries that signicantly differed from the average, featuring low
ecological footprints combined with high GDPs.
Searching for the reasons for the divergence from the general
tendency, we examined the degree of decoupling. Table 2 contains
the data of 10 countries with the largest, and 10 with the lowest
footprint intensity, plus our own country, Hungary. The data rows
of the year 1999 are taken from the study of York et. al., while the
2009 data are derived from our calculations. For the intensity of
114
Table 2
Ten countries with the lowest and the highest EF/GDP ratio and the EF intensity and GDP of Hungary in 1999 and 2009.
1999
2009
Ranks
Countries
T/Md
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
20
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
Switzerland
Mauritius
Italy
Austria
Japan
Germany
Netherlands
Columbia
Korea, Republic of
France
Hungary
Burkina Faso
Ethiopia
Niger
Rwanda
Malawi
Nigeria
Mongolia
Mali
Zambia
Tanzania
1.62
1.81
1.87
2.04
2.05
2.12
2.17
2.23
2.45
2.48
3.01
13.56
13.63
15.55
16.09
16.68
16.69
16.72
16.81
17.49
21.44
0.33
0.37
0.38
0.42
0.42
0.44
0.45
0.46
0.5
0.51
0.62
2.79
2.8
3.2
3.31
3.43
3.44
3.44
3.46
3.6
4.41
GDP
($/pc)
25512
8312
20585
23166
23257
22169
22176
6006
13478
21175
10232
870
574
739
660
523
795
1541
681
719
480
Ranks
Countries
T/Md
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
21.
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
Norway (22)
New Zealand (75)
Saudi Arabia (52)
Switzerland (1)
Cuba (46)
Japan (5)
Germany (6)
United Kingdom (14)
Kuwait (24)
Austria (4)
Hungary (20)
Malawi
Uganda
Ethiopia (123)
Mali (129)
Burundi
Papua New Guinea
Guinea
Central African Republic
Liberia
Niger (124)
0.49
0.89
0.92
1
1.1
1.19
1.21
1.24
1.27
1.28
1.44
11.59
12.26
12.57
12.74
12.86
13.41
14.71
16.79
19.29
29.47
0.22
0.39
0.41
0.44
0.49
0.52
0.53
0.55
0.56
0.56
0.63
5.12
5.41
5.55
5.62
5.68
5.92
6.49
7.41
8.51
13.01
GDP
$/pc
55297
30236
42324
50107
17280
31994
37209
36422
78013
40679
20879
690
1224
955
1570
700
1938
1156
834
622
780
2
The EF values of the calculation were not included in the article of York et al.
(2004) (however these values can be calculated from the intensity values). The
national ecological footprint values are continuously adjusted by the GFN retroactively, so there may be differences between the calculated values and the currently
available time-series data sets of GFN (2012). In the cited article the GDP data for
1999 was compared to the 1998 EF data.
intensity indicators (Table 3). In these countries, the GDP per capita
was very low, sometimes having a value lower than a thousand of
dollars/person. There is also a concern that the difference between
the countries having the best and worst situation is growing. In
1999, the T ratio of Tanzania was thirteen times more than the T
indicator of Switzerland which was in the best position, while this
difference between Niger and Norway was sixty-fold in 2009.
The phenomenon of decoupling can be observed in 89% of countries analysed; 30% shows strong, while 59% weak decoupling. The
intensity data of 131 countries is shown in the Cartesian coordinate system (Figs. 3, 4). The horizontal axis shows the GDP per
capita values, the values of the vertical axis represent the intensity data weighted by the medians (T/Md). Footprint intensity is
the log (base 10) of the impact intensity coefcient, high- intensity
values indicate low efciency. The osculation of the vertical axis
is set to 1, so 50% of the countries with higher eco-efciency can
be found below the axis, while countries with lower eco-efciency
can be seen above the axis. Table 1 shows that the value of the
median has halved in the last ten years, i.e. the ecological footprint
intensity signicantly improved (decreased) in the countries of the
world. Figs. 3 and 4 show that there are countries with favorable
and unfavorable eco-efciency among the poorer ones, however, all
115
Table 3
Decoupling in the most and least eco-effective countries and in Hungary.
Countries
Decoupling
Norway
New Zealand
Saudi Arabia
Switzerland
Cuba
Japan
Germany
United Kingdom
Kuwait
Austria
Hungary
Malawi
Uganda
Ethiopia
Mali
Burundi
Papua New Guinea
Guinea
Central African Republic
Liberia
Niger
110
75
317
96
336
38
68
79
208
76
104
32
14
66
130
23
18
35
25
26
6
66
69
4
21
28
20
4
16
28
10
3
8
42
53
75
88
83
40
12
32
100
strong
strong
strong
weak
weak
strong
strong
strong
weak
weak
strong
strong
none
weak
weak
none
none
none
none
none
none
countries with higher GDP can be found in the favorable part of the
coordinate system. High GDP was dened as GDP per capita in countries with ecological footprint intensity with a value of less than
1. This border is represented by the black triangles in both gures,
with a value of $/capita 17,719 in 1999, while in 2009 this value was
$/capita 28,840. During the examination of individual customers,
Csutora (2014) came to similar conclusions; the brown (environmentally uninterested) groups of consumers are not present among
high-income families. These brown consumers seem to disappear
above a monthly net income of 350 thousand HUF, which indicates
that higher-income families can be considered to be environmentally more conscious, or at least to have an average willingness to
act in the eld of environmental protection.
Table 4 shows the details of countries with high GDP and highlights the ten most eco-efcient countries (Table 2). There were 7
countries in 1999 among the 18 countries with the highest GDP,
which were also featured among the most eco-efcient ones. In
2009, nine of the 24 richest countries can be seen as prominent in
terms of eco-efciency. The Ranks column in Table 4 show the EF
intensity ranks.
5. Conclusions
The correlation between GDP and EF was found to be stronger
than moderate in both years; in higher-income countries the eco-
We calculated with 6 billion people in 1999 and 6.8 billion people in 2009.
116
Table 4
The worlds richest countries.
1999
Ranks
32.
22.
1.
24.
16.
45.
5.
19.
4.
37.
7.
6.
11.
10.
54.
29.
3.
14.
2009
USA
Norway
Switzerland
Kuwait
Denmark
Canada
Japan
Belgium
Austria
Australia
Netherlands
Germany
Ireland
France
Finland
Sweden
Italy
United Kingdom
T
3.28
3.01
1.62
3.06
2.72
3.75
2.05
2.89
2.04
3.38
2.17
2.12
2.48
2.48
4.04
3.26
1.87
2.63
T/Md
0.67
0.62
0.33
0.63
0.56
0.77
0.42
0.60
0.42
0.69
0.45
0.44
0.51
0.51
0.83
0.67
0.38
0.54
GDP
29602
26342
25512
25314
24218
23582
23257
23223
23166
22452
22176
22169
21482
21175
20847
20659
20585
20336
Ranks
9.
31.
1.
4.
25.
15.
3.
18.
10.
16.
17.
49.
30.
51.
24.
7.
8.
19.
11.
14.
6.
32.
2.
28.
Kuwait
United ArabEmirates
Norway
Switzerland
USA
Netherlands
Saudi Arabia
Ireland
Austria
Australia
Sweden
Denmark
Canada
Belgium
Finland
Germany
United Kingdom
France
Italy
Spain
Japan
Greece
New Zealand
Korea, Republic of
T
1.27
1.53
0.49
1.00
1.49
1.32
0.92
1.37
1.28
1.34
1.36
1.91
1.52
1.93
1.49
1.21
1.24
1.40
1.28
1.31
1.19
1.54
0.89
1.51
T/Md
0.56
0.68
0.22
0.44
0.66
0.58
0.41
0.60
0.56
0.59
0.60
0.84
0.67
0.85
0.66
0.53
0.55
0.62
0.57
0.58
0.52
0.68
0.39
0.67
GDP
78014
59291
55297
50107
47001
44576
42324
41710
40679
40209
39819
39774
38745
37883
37688
37210
36422
34942
34299
32931
31994
30544
30236
28481
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