Guimarães, one of the three EU Mission Cities in Portugal, is a historic city embracing modern green initiatives. It has set an ambitious goal to become climate neutral by 2030 and an even more ambitious long-term vision to become a ’one planet city’ with 100% ’eco citizens’ by 2050. This means that Guimarães strives to become a city with an ecological footprint within the planet’s capacity to sustain it through joint efforts of sustainable and resource-efficient living.
Measuring ecological footprint
With the ambition of becoming a one-planet city, Guimarães needed a way to measure how many planets-worth of resources the city and its residents are consuming. This would allow for monitoring progress towards the shared vision. In collaboration with the Global Footprint Network and the University of Aveiro, the city introduced two types of ecological footprint interfaces: A research-based municipal ecological footprint (2017) and an individual ecological footprint calculator (2019).
Municipal ecological footprint
Following the municipal Ecological Footprint calculations, which began in 2017, several initiatives were created to promote sustainability and to change the behavioural consumption of residents. To name a few, the city accelerated its programme to collect biowaste in restaurants and reworked its public transport system to abide by new criteria for sustainable/electric vehicles.
Guimarães plans to measure ecological footprint at the municipal level every five years, to continuously monitor its overall progress while allowing time for the initiatives and projects implemented following the measurements to take effect. Therefore, the next municipal ecological footprint will be measured in 2025.
Individual ecological footprint calculator
Building on the positive experience with the municipal ecological footprint, Guimarães had an idea to develop and introduce an individual ecological footprint calculator available for everyone. Together with the Global Network Footprint and the University of Aveiro, the city made its educational, household-level ecological footprint calculator available on its municipal website in 2021.
The city uses the platform to build awareness of an individual’s overall demand on the planet’s ecosystems while grounding them in and informing them of the local sustainability and conservation goals of the municipality. This interactive, visual interface first asks individuals a series of questions about their lifestyle within the contexts of food, housing, energy, and mobility. It then presents results within different consumption categories (food, housing, mobility, goods, services) and also displays the individual’s numbers in comparison to Portugal’s averages and offers suggestions for sustainable living moving forward.
The individual ecological footprint calculator is used as an awareness-raising tool in different municipal events as well as a way to assess the impact of their educational initiatives by measuring participant footprints before and after the educational programmes. So far, it has been used by more than 15,000 individuals with the numbers continuously increasing.
What were the key drivers supporting the implementation?
- Shared long-term vision: Consensus across all political parties and stakeholders in support of the green transition and one planet city vision.
- Detailed environmental strategy: Tools, commitments, plans, strategies, policies, and projects integrated into Guimarães Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan 2030 foresee a 39% reduction in energy consumption and a 42% reduction in respective emissions by the target date.
- Research-based support for decision-making: In 2014, the Mayor of Guimarães launched the Landscape Laboratory (LdP) to facilitate research and development on topical environmental issues to support political decision-making and implementation of research-based projects, and education and awareness-raising programmes. LdP has been instrumental in developing and implementing the ecological footprint approach.
- Stakeholder engagement: Collaboration with the University of Aveiro, the Global Network Footprint, and other local partners like the NGO ZERO was vital to the development of the research-based approach to measuring the municipal and individual ecological footprints.
And what were the challenges and barriers?
- Data availability is the main challenge for the city-level Ecological Footprint calculations. Guimarães addressed this by disaggregating national and regional data and continuously increasing the available local data. The accuracy of the ecological calculators increases with the more data available about the territory’s land-use matrix.
- Adaptation of the ecological footprint method to the local context: Guimarães was one of the early adopters of the ecological footprint approach for local governments in Portugal. Consequently, it needed to develop and test the methodology in the Portuguese context for three consecutive years in collaboration with several partners, which was a resource-demanding process. Guimarães was also a frontrunner in developing the individual ecological footprint calculator.
Potential for replication
Currently, there are different tools and methodologies for measuring ecological footprint that can be used by cities. Cities can choose whether to outsource the development of an ecological footprint calculator or work collaboratively with local research institutions and other stakeholders to develop a locally adapted methodology or tool. The Guimarães experience provides several insights for more successful replication and implementation:
- Aligning data and strategy: Purposeful development and integration of ecological footprint calculations that are aligned with the city strategy and vision, projects, and educational initiatives have a greater likelihood of achieving impactful results in terms of concrete actions for green transition and awareness-raising among the general population.
- Multidisciplinary teams involved in R&D and environmental education are instrumental in ensuring the effectiveness and widespread use of the developed platforms.
- Continuous improvement of local data availability is crucial for ensuring the feasibility and accuracy of ecological footprint calculations. If initial data is not available, it’s possible to follow Guimarães' example and conduct an environmental diagnosis to understand the existing deficiencies, including governance processes and data availability.
- Simple and effective visual communication of both the city vision and ecological footprint results have made it a powerful tool to inform other cities and local people of the consequences of resource consumption and to provide insight into how neutralising initiatives and/or projects are influencing human ecological demand. The shocking and easily understandable message has been instrumental in getting people on board with climate action.
- The municipal and individual ecological footprint methodologies are equally essential in the realisation of city targets. The municipal ecological footprint in Guimarães was instrumental in decision making to address the existing challenges, while the individual ecological footprint has been crucial for awareness-raising among residents.