Good Morning.

So we start with lecture one, and generally, the outline of this particular lecture, first

we will talk about the role of materials, followed by something called embodied energy,

carbon dioxide emissions and lowering of cement consumption, et cetera.

So we will see that later on.

So, basically if you look at it, the global population is increasing, right and therefore

consumption is also increasing very fast.

So if you look at the world resource institute, this is of course when I say 15 years this

is not now, because the data is a little bit old, 2010 may be, right, so 15 years say 1995

to 2010.

Production wastes have been increasing in spite of increasing the efficiency.

So this is happening and there is something called a living planet report.

So we were consuming around 20 percent of the resources than earth can produce.

I will explain this actually.

20 percent was much earlier, now it must have gone up far higher.

So, if you see world population growth, this is of course the projected world population

growth.

So the world population in 2010 was somewhere there let us say 7,000 million and increasing

in this manner 2100 it will go somewhere this is the rate.

Obviously your consumption of world resources increases together with this.

Out of this if you see Asia, the rate is very high and this is what is projected if you

continue to grow in the same manner.

Africa, also very high; Latin America, North America, Europe, Oceania, practically its

all stabilized.

So this is the scenario, if the population is growing in the current rate.

But if it is controlled somewhat then it can come down, come down to the level of, some

level of 2010 or something of that kind, particularly with respect to Asia and Africa.

So these are the continents where the population is growing at a very fast rate.

And therefore human beings for their sustenance needs resources, energy, food, water, everything,

right.

And earth of course has got a limit to produce.

It cannot produce infinitely.

It has got a limit.

We will look into that.

In fact, if you see the population growth, I have another diagram when I will come to

it; it was practically not increasing at any very great rate till possibly about the 17th

century or so.

But with the advent of modern science coming in, the medicine coming in, the child mortality

rate has reduced, you know, death at birth and things like that were reduced.

So the population started increasing actually exponentially.

So now in the previous diagram lower and the upper boundaries of the shaded regions correspond

to low and high variants, lower and upper bounds, as I showed.

The extremities, the previous diagram if you look at it, they are the upper bounds and

lower bounds.

So depending upon how you control the population; this is the bounds, lower bounds, this is

the upper bound.

So somewhere in between, we are likely to be in any case.

So that is what it is.

This is the projection by United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affair.

Ecological footprint is another terminology we use, so this is one issue, we will come

to like something more related to this population growth and sustainability and things like

that.

Ecological footprint is a measure of humanity and demand on nature.

How much do you demand of nature?

Population is increasing, how much are you demanding of nature?

So the accounting system tracks on the demand side, how much land, water, area, human population

uses to provide all its stakes from nature.

So that is how we define ecological footprint.

So that is basically, it is a measure of humanity’s demand on nature and this accounting system.

So ecological footprint may be even for a process or something of that kind.

So, it is basically a demand on nature and this is essentially an accounting system.

You try to calculate out how much.

How much on the demand side, how much land, water, and everything put together you use

from nature?

So this therefore includes areas of producing resources

that are consumed.

The space for accommodating the buildings, roads, the ecosystem for absorbing the waste

emissions such as well carbon dioxide is one of them, there are other wastes.

So this calculation accounts for each year’s prevailing technology because technology is

changing.

So whatever we have been using, controlling earlier waste, whatever we are possibly making

waste, we might reuse some of them with newer technologies.

So it is a dynamic thing.

This is a dynamic thing and will change with time.

So the calculations of each year’s prevailing technology, so currently prevailing technology

according to that this accounting is done.

As productivity and technological efficiency change from year to year, that is what it

is.

So that is the idea.

Since it changes from year to year, therefore ecological footprint is calculated on a yearly

basis because your technology changes every year.

Well, it also tracks the supply of nature.

For example, how much biologically productive area is available to provide the services?

for example, food.

Whole of the land cannot provide, is not biologically productive to give us food, therefore there

is a bio-capacity.

So these accounts are able to compare human demand against nature’s supply of bio-capacity.

So the ecological footprint in this context will be defined something like this.

So therefore formal definition will be it is a measure of how much area of biologically

productive land and water an individual or population or activity, so you can say the

ecological footprint of cement production is an activity.

Ecological footprint of India as a country or maybe Delhi as a state or city, so one

can look into that.

So to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates, so therefore

also, so this is how much area of biologically productive land and water an individual or

process or certain area, population consumes and absorbs, basically measure how much of

the waste generated is absorbed, so using prevailing technology and resource management

practices.

And this is changing quite a bit if you see.

For example, if you go to, let me give you an example like I was just mentioning some

time earlier that possibly in a sport now we started using crumb rubber for property

enhancement as well as using some waste material.

Similarly in rigid pavement systems you no longer use the Ordinary Portland Cement alone.

In concrete pavement it is almost a regulation practice to use lesser flyers or similar sort

of thing to control heat of hydration and so on.

So you can use some of the waste.

So resource management and handling the waste, both are accounted for, taken care of in this

ecological footprint.

So if you see the ecological footprint well, it is a measure of how fast you consume resources

and generate waste.

It is a measure, high ecological footprint would mean that you are consuming a lot of

resources and possibly generating a lot of wastage, so accordingly that.

So basically there is something called carbon footprint as well.

And so basically you can see, so energy is used up in transportation, vehicular transportation,

as you can see, also like this essentially might be coming from fossil fuel, which is

nothing but the deposits of the plants and animal remains which gets converted into,

some of them gets converted into fossil fuel.

Then food builds up that occurs, so we also do built up food, so from that it goes and

then therefore timber we use, so food and seafood, everything, so this already has got

a footprint.

So all this has got an ecological footprint.

The transportation that you are using, then all kinds of industry or building sector or

anything of that kind, the timber you use, the food that you produce, seafood that you

produce all has an ecological footprint or a part of it is carbon footprint as well.

So carbon footprint is related to carbon.

So ecological footprint is related to this, all right.

So we can then measure something called a planet equivalent.

So what have we looked so far?

We said that the world population is growing.

Then we said to take care of, to understand how much of natural resources human beings

are using we can have an accounting system in which we can calculate the ecological footprint,

which will take care of the resources that you are using and the waste you are generating.

And that is what it is.

So our overall activities like transportation, building system, food, everything has got

a link to the ecological footprint.

Now we define something called planet equivalent.

Now you see the amount of resources the earth can generate is fixed because two things are

fixed.

Once its surface area is fixed and also the energy it receives, it mainly receives the

energy from the sun.

So the sun gives us energy and it is a periodic thing.

Whatever you get every year, most of it is dissipated out also.

By and large, although you know, the concepts of global warming which is coming, we will

look into later on, so it actually receives and dissipates it out.

That means that the budget is fixed.

Whatever you are receiving is fixed.

Every year it is fixed, unless you have an artificial sun, hydrogen energy comes by,

create an artificial sun somewhere, from water you convert deuterium into helium and all

that fusion process, till that time, but that will be still very small compared to the energy

that you get from the sun.

So every year’s energy budget is fixed, the area is fixed.

Therefore, what planet can give in a year is fixed.

What planet can give in a year is fixed.

If we assume that all the energy that you are getting from the sun, you efficiently

trap it, but you cannot trap everything, it is not possible thermodynamically because

there will be, you know in any process you cannot have 100 percent efficiency.

So whatever energy you are getting and the land, both are fixed.

So therefore, you can talk in terms of what is called a planet equivalent.

Now, what is the equivalent planet?

By measuring the footprint of a population, individual, city, business, et cetera, nation,

or of all humanity, everybody, all humanity, we can assess the pressure on the planet.

Because economic footprint means you are consuming and generating waste.

So whatever you are consuming, that has to come from the mother earth.

Now this consumption will be in need of energy and obviously the land area as well.

So how much a planet can generate in a year that you can actually compute out.

I mean it is a large accounting, but one can do that.

So, you can measure, this of course helps in managing the ecological assets and more

wisely taking personal and collective action, supporting a world where humanity lives within

the earth’s bounds.

So we should be actually consuming that much what earth can produce in a year.

Otherwise, we are actually, we are kind of withdrawing from the resources already it

has generated over the years.

For example, the fuel that you get, fossil fuel you get, it is generated from millions

of years, so you are actually withdrawing from there.

The reserve that has been created over the years, you are withdrawing from there.

And if you go on doing that, you might finish all of them and nothing will be left for the

future generations at some point of time.

So, that is it, so earth’s bounds.

The planet equivalent is related to that.

Okay, we will come to that.

So this is basically based on Ecological footprint and it was conceived in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel

and William Rees at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

The ecological footprint is now widely used by scientists, businesses, governments, etcetera,

etcetera, individuals and institutions to monitor ecological, resources use and advance

sustainable development.

So this ecological footprint is used to advance sustainable development or monitor sustainable

development.

So its unit is global hectares.

Global hectares, it is a measure of area.

Because global, again for the whole world, because trade is global, individual or country’s

footprint includes land, sea from all over the world.

Ecological footprint is often referred to in the short term as footprint.

Quite often, people just say it as footprint and thus you know, usually people use them

capitalized.

So basically its unit is global hectares.

So global hectares, per person per capita you can think of.

So this is basically a productivity weight, weighted actual area used to report both the

biocapacity of the earth and the demand on the bio-capacity.

So global hectare is normalized to the area-weighted average productivity of biologically productive

land and water in a given year.

In the sense that, you see, some land can produce a lot more agricultural goods compared

to another.

So a desert land where you do not have irrigation really, its productivity is different than

the one, which is on the river basin, fertile areas and so on or irrigated areas.

So therefore there has to be some kind of weightage, right.

Weightage has to be given.

So one-meter square is not, or one kilometer square or hectare is not the same, so it has

to be multiplied by that kind of weighted.

So these are the weighted areas, right, to look at the biocapacity of earth.

That means agricultural production, or if it is mining, then how much is the mining?

so all extraction or any other kind of thing.

So this is then area-weighted average productivity of biologically productive land, then that

you can do like multiplied by the area, divide by total area, you will get a normalized one.

So that is what is done.

So as I was saying different land types have different productivity.

So a global hectare of, for example, cropland, would occupy a smaller physical area than

the much less biologically productive pasture land whose productivity is less, as more pasture

would be needed to provide the same biological-capacity as one hectare of the cropland.

Because world bio-productivity varies slightly from year to year, just digressing a little

bit.

I think it is the beginning of the twentieth century a lot of people were thinking, because

the population started growing.

So a lot of people started thinking, can society be stable as it is expanding now?

Malthus was one of them, whose idea is that the population increases in geometrical progression.

So it is in the GP series.

Agricultural production was increasing in arithmetic series.

Therefore this is not sustainable, you know in those days.

But later on, technology changed.

Productivity of the land increased.

Agricultural science came forward and therefore this theory never remained valid actually.

This prediction or projection was not, I mean it did not serve any purpose because things

started changing.

So therefore technology can bring in certain changes, and therefore these weights that

you are going to use, for the same area for agricultural production, might change depending

upon what it is.

So it is basically year-to-year changes and it is slightly from year to year because technological

changes do occur.

So followed by this is the planet equivalent, which I just mentioned.

For every individual or country’s ecological footprint it has got a planet equivalent or

the number of earths.

Supposing I find out for a particular population the ecological footprint per person per capita

for a given year, multiplied by the world population, per person I found out, world

population, that will give you the planet equivalent of that particular area.

But the overall planet equivalent of the whole world one can find out.

So that means that many earths would be required, if the consumption rate is the same as the

population that I have considered.

So, if you look at total earth’s population, you can find out a planet equivalent, because

as I said, the total budget, area is fixed, energy is fixed and in the total global hectare,

that is actually required that we can find out.

So if everyone lived like an individual or average citizen of a given country, first

you calculate out for the whole country per capita, that is then it becomes average for

that country and everybody in the world lives in a similar manner, then for the whole nation

you can find out or the whole world.

So planet equivalent you can find out.

So it is the ratio of an individual's or country’s per capita footprint to the per capita biological

capacity available on the earth.

So for the whole globe, it was 1.78 global hectares in 2008.

So that means, currently the rate at which the kind of lifestyle they have, if they continue

to have that kind of lifestyle, the total global hectare that would be required one

can find out.

So basically you can make it as a kind of ratio footprint per capita to the biological

capacity available, capacity available for the same because earth’s capacity is known

and what we require?

Because we are consuming in terms of food, shelter, and things like that, transportation.

So therefore what is available to us, whatever we are spending we know and what is available

to us is known.

If I take that ratio, that gives me the planet equivalent.

And the planet equivalent means the whole earth taken together.

So it was for the whole earth the current rate of consumption, current style of living

let us say.

In 2008, divided by the biocapacity of the earth, it was 1.78 the capacity available

and the world average ecological footprint was 2.7 global.

So consumption rate was 2.7 global hectares, because in consumptions, we can actually calculate

out how much area for the food production, how much area you need to produce that kind

of food, and all other resources.

So it was 2.7 and 1.78 was the biocapacity of the earth.

So both can be measured in ecological footprint, the capacity and your consumption.

Because consumption means how much fossil fuel you are using, how much food you need,

and correspondingly how much equivalent land area you need to produce the same with weightage.

For example, mining will have different weightage than agriculture and so on.

So one can calculate out in this manner.

So the ratio would be 2.7 was what the consumption rate and available capacity was 1.78.

So if you divide 2.7 by 1.78 or whatever it is, you get something like this.

So that means, in that particular year by doing a total accounting, we would need 1.48

planet equivalent.

Or in other words, we need 1.48 earth.

So there were 12 billion hectares of biologically productive land and water on this planet in

2008, with all weightages multiplied.

Dividing the number of people alive in that particular year, 6.7 billion gives 1.79 hectares

per person.

You know this is an accounting system.

Take account of everything and that is what it is.

This assumes that no land is set aside for other species like other animals and things

like that, that consume the same biological material as humans.

So that means you have used everything out and other species simply are not there.

Since the 1970s, humanity has been overshooting with annual demand of resources exceeding

what earth can generate each year.

So till 1970 it was balancing and now it takes earth one year and six months, because 1.48,

so 1.48, we have seen something of this order.

So therefore you need one year and six months to regenerate what to use in a year because

your land is fixed and you handle all your resources.

The energy required to produce that is also fixed, the budget is fixed.

So it is an interaction between land and energy all together and you need 1.48 earths.

So we maintain this overshoot by liquidating the earth’s resources, so reserved resources

actually we are taking out, like fossil fuel, which is a reserved resource.

Also let us say mainly this will be the one that would be taken out from the reserve.

Also the materials, some of the other materials that you are consuming, for example if you

are producing, let us say, you are producing a motor car, then you are obviously using

steel as one of the major materials.

Or if you are using the plastics, that means again the petroleum products, so crude that

you use, so therefore you are actually withdrawing from whatever is available to you.

So overshoot is a vastly underestimated threat to human wellbeing so therefore, this consciousness

is needed.

So that is what is being health of the planet, and one that is not adequately or currently

it was not addressed, but people started becoming conscious.

But it is not necessarily 100 percent; you know socio-politically 100 percent consciousness

has come, as we can see gradually.

So that is what it is.

This is the planet equivalent versus age diagram as we can give, as we can see.

So one planet is this capacity.

All the land, all the water surfaces that you have, if you calculate out its capacity,

bio-capacity, as I was talking about, ecological, in terms of ecological footprint, all lands

are not useful, so the weightages have to be given.

And all the water, I mean that also may not be useful for your production processes.

So that weightage has to be given also.

So, if you do that, then that gives you the capacity, also the energy that you get every

year, from the sun, because both are needed.

Now energy right now you are taking from fossil fuel, supposing I am able to use efficiently,

most of the energy from the sun, what is the possibility?

So that would give you the biocapacity of the earth.

That is one earth.

So that will be ideal that you do not extract anything from mother earth.

Use the sun’s energy fully for all your purposes, which is impossible anyway.

So that way bio-capacity, but how much are you using now?

You can count, because how much fuel you are using, fossil fuel you are using, corresponding

energy would be there.

How much food are you using?

So all this, it showed a trend in this manner in 2010.

That means you needed one and a half that is what I said, that 1.48 ratio of global

hectare used up, 2.7 divided by bio-capacity and 7.48 and if it follows the same rate,

it would require three earths by 2050.

So you know your planet equivalent can go to three times.

Nearly three.

But if we can control this, then we can even bring it back to one planet equivalent, if

efficiently we use the system, then we can bring it to one planet.

So that is the idea.

So I think we will just break here.