IS CHINA an environmental pariah or not? Now there鈥檚 more evidence on both sides of the argument.
China鈥檚 average ecological footprint has doubled since the 1960s, says a joint report from the environment group WWF and a Chinese government agency, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. The average footprint per person, however, is still smaller than the world average, as well as being only a third that of a European and a sixth that of the average US citizen.
The ecological footprint is a measure of the amount of global resources a country uses relative to the land area those resources take to produce. But it is not a cut-and-dried science, and some of its measurements are controversial.
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鈥淪ome of the measurements used to calculate ecological footprint are controversial鈥�
For instance, the study says China runs an 鈥渆cological deficit鈥� with the rest of the world, because its footprint is twice its land area. By that assessment, it is a worse offender than some much richer countries that use more resources per head but have larger land areas 鈥� including the US.
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