Prof. Norman Myers,
Independent Scientist.

Photo: (left to right) Mathis, Craig & Nicky

The EcoIndex 'scoring system' used by many Best Foot Forward products is based on a methodology known as Ecological Footprinting co-originated by the truly clever Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees.

The co-founders of BFF, Nicky Chambers and Craig Simmons, have spent more than 3 years on data research and modelling to adapt the methodology to support 'component-based' footprinting. This allows the impact of individual activities to be more easily measured and communicated.

On this site we maintain perhaps the largest list of links to sites and articles about Ecological Footprinting.

You can either go straight to this list of links or work through the narrative below which will help guide you to some of the more informative and interesting articles and sites.

There are several good introductory articles to the Ecological Footprint (EF) concept. We recommend articles by William Rees, Mathis Wackernagel and Craig Simmons. A good read is also Wackernagel and Rees' ground-breaking book 'Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth' available from New Society. A new book by Nicky Chambers, Craig Simmons and Mathis Wackernagel, Sharing Nature's Interest, (published by Earthscan) provides a practical guide to the applications of ecological footprint analysis. It contains data tables and numerous case studies. 

If you want to find out more about using the EF concept primarily as a communications tool then check out this recent work by John Barrett.

If you are more interested in sustainable development issues, and how to measure and manage environmental impacts using the EF methodology, then there are many papers that you might want to read.

Local Agenda 21 officers, community groups, NGO's and others interested in calculating the ecological footprint for a small region will probably be interested in this report on Oxfordshire prepared by Kevin Lewis, Craig Simmons and Nicky Chambers. Those interested in measuring individual or personal impacts might find this paper by Craig Simmons and Nicky Chambers helpful. It looks specifically at the footprinting of individual households. The component-based 'Stepwise' footprinting method used is explained in more detail in this article published in Ecological Economics by Craig Simmons, Kevin Lewis and John Barrett.

If you are interested in the footprints of nations then Mathis Wackernagel et al have calculated figures for 52 countries. Mathis is based at Redefining Progress whose web site  contains up to date information on ecological footprint research, papers and applications. Also, don't forget to check out the list of other links maintained by BFF.

We shortly hope to have written up some of work that BFF have done on corporate and organisational footprints.