The ecological footprint of a country says a lot about the development status of that country. When looking at data on the  Global Footprint Network I was curious to see how the two politically competing hegemonies, China and United States, compared when it came to ecological footprints. Since the United States relies on China for many imported goods and services, I was interested to see if that would factor into China’s footprint as well.

I used these two graphs to gain my information.

This chart represents the ecological footprint of the country.

This chart represents the ecological footprint of each person in the country.

By looking at these two graphs I created the observation that currently China has a greater population and a greater ecological footprint as a country than the United States. However, when looking at the ecological footprint per person in the designated country, the United States towers over China in ecological footprint, even though the population is smaller. With this I concluded that trade and production of products in China probably has a factor on their ecological footprint.

According to the CCICED-WWF Report on Ecological Footprint in China, as the economy in China increased, the amount of CO2 emissions increased as well. As the United States is one of the main characters in the China economy, the demand from the US for Chinese products has some fault in this rapid increase. Since China does not use renewable resources, like wind or solar power, to power these operations their ecological footprint is dramatically increasing.

From examination of the data charts above, I was able to conclude that even though China has a larger population the country as a whole has a larger ecological footprint than the United States. However, the ecological footprint per person is larger in the US than in China. The reason behind China’s large ecological footprint is largely due to the US lifestyle and the demand for China-made products.

Resources:

Kitzes, J. (n.d.). Report on Ecological Footprint in China. Retrieved 2021, from https://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/chna_footprint_report_final.pdf

https://data.footprintnetwork.org/?_ga=2.49044390.1656159128.1611937083-1798263005.1611937083#/SocioEconomics?cn=5001,231,351&type=BCtot,EFCtot&misc=pop