Using Ecological Footprint Accounting to Challenge Local Policies towards Climate Change: A Critical Review from Six Portuguese Municipalities

Local governments can play a relevant and meaningful role in the transition towards a more sustainable consumption, although local initiatives fall short in delivering significant environmental sustainability impacts given their scale, autonomy and policy discretion. Cities are seen as both generators of environmental challenges and consumption pressures as well as key intervention hotspots for securing future global sustainability. Applying Ecological Footprint accounting at a local scale allows the identification of the consumption drivers that contribute the most to the pressure residents and economic activities place on ecological assets. This, in turn, supports the understanding of the daily activities with the highest potential for impact reduction as well as the critical areas that local policies should tackle in order to mitigate climate change drivers. This paper intends to discuss the challenges of local leaders and citizens to work towards the reduction of Cities Ecological Footprints, the support of their biocapacity and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, which are enforced by the UN Agenda 2030. It focuses on the results of the project Ecological Footprint and biocapacity of Portuguese Municipalities applied to six Portuguese municipalities. Although these municipalities have been strongly active in local policies to tackle environmental issues, results reveal unsustainable consumption patterns and several drawbacks to protect cities’ biocapacity. This paper tries to highlight critical leverage points to redirect short-term, mid-term and long-term policies, reinforcing the role of local leaders as critical drivers of behavioral change, working together with the local population, public and private companies and other organizations to decrease pressure on natural resources and on the drivers of climate change.