By Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, Dr. Anita Frehner, Dr. Lucas Grob, Dr. Adrian M\u00fcller, Dr. David Lin
\nGlobal Footprint Network, FiBL, & Swiss Food Research<\/p>\n
DEUTSCHE VERSION UNTEN<\/a><\/p>\n This piece provides background to Swiss Deficit Day<\/em><\/strong>, or the day of the year when Swiss residents begin to demand more than Swiss ecosystems can provide in the entire year.<\/em><\/strong> It lands on March 25th<\/sup> this year. The authors examine why this date is significant and what it means for Swiss residents.<\/p>\n Recently, we learned that Toblerone is not a food from Switzerland<\/a>. Now it must remove the Matterhorn from its packaging. But Toblerone is not alone. While many iconic foods in Switzerland can claim Swiss origin (100% of milk products, 60% of eggs, and 90% of meat consumed in Switzerland are sourced domestically<\/a>), the percentage of food consumed in Switzerland that comes from Swiss farms is far lower. If we include the feed imported to produce eggs, milk, and meat and all the other traded food, Switzerland’s food biocapacity1<\/sup> is only able to produce 40% of all that\u2019s eaten in the country. And this does not even include the carbon Footprint of food.<\/p>\n On top of that, food is just one part of Switzerland\u2019s consumption. Adding up all of Switzerland\u2019s resident\u2019s consumption results in a demand on nature that is 4.4 times<\/a> what Swiss ecosystems can regenerate. It is like using 4.4 \u2018Switzerlands\u2019 to satisfy just one.<\/p>\n Among the 35 countries in Europe with more than one million people, Switzerland trails in 32nd<\/sup> place when ranked by the ratio between the country\u2019s demand on nature to how much its own ecosystems can regenerate. This simple fact demonstrates how resource insecure the country is. Consult the table below for more details, based on the latest available data (2018).<\/p>\n One may naively believe that Switzerland, with its high income, is shielded from disasters imposed by lacking resource security. And indeed, income does help. But it is not a guarantee of resource security. Income trends are unfavorable because Switzerland\u2019s relative income advantage is vanishing; the world’s GDP growth has consistently exceeded<\/a> that of Switzerland over the last 40 years.<\/p>\n Switzerland\u2019s large dependence on ecosystems from abroad puts its economy at risk. This is made worse by persistent global overshoot. For over half a century, overshoot has led to an accumulated ecological debt, excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, heightened competition for food and energy, and a huge decline in biodiversity. These symptoms are becoming more prominent with unusual heat waves, forest fires, droughts, and floods.<\/p>\n Ecosystems are fragile. Their ability to provide becomes less resilient when faced with other shocks. The war in Ukraine and parallel global tensions reduce the reliability of global supply chains for anybody, even for those equipped with money.<\/p>\n Switzerland\u2019s seemingly high self-sufficiency for animal products is misleading because most animal feed is imported. Animals primarily eat roughage and concentrated feed. The former is nearly entirely supplied by Swiss farms, whereas more than half of the latter is imported. Chicken, eggs, and pork are animal products which depend mostly on concentrated feedstuffs. Only about one quarter of chicken feed is grown domestically, and for pork, slightly over half. In contrast, plant-based products, such as vegetables and fruit, have a much higher foreign dependence. Footprint accounts show that 85% of the cropland biocapacity for vegetables and fruit consumed in Switzerland is located abroad.2<\/sup><\/p>\n The pride in Swiss-branded animal products keeps today\u2019s food system overly reliant on animals and their byproducts. This reliance slows down the transition to an ecologically and nutritionally superior food system, one with more fruit and vegetables.<\/p>\n All human activities compete for ecological regeneration. Direct harvest is one demand; It provides us with food, timber, and biological textile fibers. The need to sequester excessive carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning (fossil fuel is much less limited by what is underground than by what can be sequestered) places additional demand on the biosphere. Then, accommodating urban infrastructure for roads and houses also competes for productive areas. The sum of all these demands has moved humanity into significant overshoot \u2013 our demand has grown to at least 75% above what Earth can regenerate.<\/p>\n This fierce competition for regenerative resources with the resulting overuse demonstrates that regenerative resources have become the material bottleneck for human economies. To manage the challenging situation, we need metrics that track demand on and availability of these regenerative resources.<\/p>\n Our dependence on the fruits of nature is not a side issue. This resource input is fundamental to every human activity, including every economic process. This dependence is also not quick to shift. It is shaped by our transportation networks, our food system, our energy grid, our housing stock, and our population size, all of which are slow to change. Given the speed of ecological change and accumulating ecological debt, most cities, companies, and countries are already late in the game.<\/p>\n Overshoot and ecological deficits are linked. Globally, they are identical. But for a country, the difference between their consumption and what the ecosystems can renew is made up either with net-imports or with resource overuse (overshoot). It is increasingly risky for a country to maintain an ecological deficit in a world with increasing overshoot.<\/p>\n Switzerland\u2019s rank of 32nd<\/sup> out of 35 European countries worries us. Yes, Switzerland may feel the urgency of more immediate matters: banks crumbling; waning access to oil and gas from Russia given the war in Ukraine; the pressure of inflation; and a sluggish economic prospect. Those economic pressures may well be amplified by persistent overshoot. Overshoot increases the cost of inputs and decreases the value of underprepared assets, thereby pushing stagflation upon us. Stagflation, stagnation and inflation combined, is doubly painful because everyday prices rise while the economy and its assets are losing in value and strength. It means that the economic sandwich is eaten up from both ends.<\/p>\n Switzerland could do better. Many interesting initiatives are underway, just not at a scale that meaningfully responds to the size of the problem.<\/p>\n If Switzerland has the resolve, it can achieve amazing things. Why mainstream Switzerland prefers to ignore the significance of overshoot and stumble blindly into the future is a mystery.<\/p>\n Dear Switzerland, don\u2019t aim for a level of resource security that is merely better than the EU. Their ratio is better than that of Switzerland, but it still takes 2.4 EUs to provide for all that\u2019s being consumed in the EU.<\/p>\n [1] Food biocapacity includes the biocapacity of cropland, pasture, and fishing grounds. More background:<\/strong><\/span> \nTable 1:<\/em><\/strong> Key Footprint and biocapacity results for the 35 European countries with populations over one million. Footprint, biocapacity, and deficit numbers are reported in global hectares per person. <\/em>The deficit day, or the day the domestic budget is used up, is calculated as follows: (domestic biocapacity\/country Footprint * 365) = day in year when budget is use<\/em>d.<\/em><\/p>\nToblerone is not alone<\/h3>\n
Ranking 32nd<\/sup> out of 35<\/h3>\n
The illusion of local<\/h3>\n
Why regenerative resources are at the core<\/h3>\n
The risk of ignoring overshoot<\/h3>\n
\n[2] These numbers are based on Agristat<\/a>, Agrarbericht<\/a>, and Global Footprint Network, MRIO<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nSwiss Deficit Day 2023 on March 25 – Press Release<\/a>
\nSwiss Deficit Day – Background<\/a>
\nEarth Overshoot Day – www.overshootday.org<\/a>
\nSwiss Footprint Facts – www.footprintnetwork.org\/swissfacts<\/a><\/p>\n