| Biography | |
|---|---|
 Dr. Gabor Harangozo Institute of Business Economics at Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary |
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| Title: Lessons learned from the ecological footprint as an indicator of sustainable development with a special focus on urban areas | |
| Abstract: Seeking for a better understanding of human development in relationship to the carrying capacity of the Earth, the ecological footprint indicator has gained considerable attention in both academic and educational literature recently. As an indicator illustrating the use of humanity's natural resources in territorial units, provides a good overview of the ecological constraints at global, national level, or even regarding smaller regional units. In addition to its simplicity to interpret it at the level of different stakeholders, an additional advantage is that the basic data are available for almost all countries (National Footprint Accounts), which also provides an opportunity to compare individual countries and track the development of the indicator over time. The more widespread, consumption-oriented version of the indicator illustrates the environmental impacts of international trade in a new light. For example, China as a major global exporter country performs much better if we allocate the ecological footprint associated with exported products at consuming countries (while, of course, the opposite is true for imported products). The ecological footprint indicator is also very useful to address the environmental impacts of urbanization in the age of the dominance of metropolitan areas. In many continents, emerging mega cities and suburban areas reshape the countries and raise new challenges for policy makers. The series of research presented here cover the timeframe between 2000 and 2020. Data for the Budapest Metropolitan Region are used as the basis of the calculation, but lessons learned can be generalized to other urban regions as well. Multi method ecological footprint calculations are used (both bottom-up and top-down, with using household consumption data and national input-output accounts). Results show that the biggest contributors of the urban ecological footprint are the carbon and the crop footprint (in terms of ecological footprint categories). In terms of consumption habits of citizens the major contributors to the ecological footprint are food consumption, transportation and household energy use. However, there are significant differences in this respect between central areas (where higher income levels and demand for services are responsible for a bigger ecological footprint) and suburbs (where heating and commuting are even more dominant). The impacts of the Covid pandemic on the ecological footprint of urban areas are yet to become clear. Lockdowns result temporarily lower transportation based footprint, but increase it through household level energy consumption. The future greening of economy and urban lifestyles may have significant positive potential in this field. Keywords: ecological footprint, urbanization, sustainable development. | |
| Biography: Dr. Gabor Harangozo is a habilitated associate professor at the Institute of Business Economics at Corvinus University of Budapest. He received his PhD degree in 2007 in the field of corporate environmental performance evaluation. His research activity includes ecological footprint calculation with various methods and focus areas (national, regional and individual) and was involved in several ecological footprint calculation projects, including approaches based on individual consumption patterns, too. He also participated in different international research projects, including the H2020 project ENABLE:EU, the ERDF Presource project. His further research interest covers evaluating environmental and sustainability performance at various levels. He has courses related to corporate sustainability, environmental policy and CSR. In 2011 he worked one year as a visiting professor at Kwangwoon University, Seoul, South Korea. Recent international peer reviewed journal articles: Csutora, M., Zsoka, A., & Harangozo, G. (2021). The Grounded Survey–An integrative mixed method for scrutinizing household energy behavior. Ecological Economics, 182, 106907. Kovács, Z., Harangozó, G., Szigeti, C., Koppány, K., Kondor, A. C., & Szabó, B. (2020). Measuring the impacts of suburbanization with ecological footprint calculations. Cities, 101, 102715.Harangozo, G., Csutora, M., & Kocsis, T. (2018). How big is big enough? Toward a sustainable future by examining alternatives to the conventional economic growth paradigm. Sustainable Development, 26(2), 172-181. Tóth, G., Szigeti, C., Harangozó, G., & Szabó, D. R. (2018). Ecological Footprint at the Micro-Scale—How It Can Save Costs: The Case of ENPRO. Resources, 7(3), 45. Hamburger, Á., & Harangozó, G. (2018). Factors Affecting the Evolution of Renewable Electricity Generating Capacities: A Panel Data Analysis of European Countries. International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, 8(5), 161-172. Harangozo, G., & Szigeti, C. (2017). Corporate carbon footprint analysis in practice–with a special focus on validity and reliability issues. Journal of cleaner production, 167, 1177-1183. Csutora, M., & Harangozo, G. (2017). Twenty years of carbon accounting and auditing–a review and outlook. Society and Economy, 39(4), 459-480. Harangozó, G., & Zilahy, G. (2015). Cooperation between business and non-governmental organizations to promote sustainable development. Journal of Cleaner Production, 89, 18-31. Harangozó, G., Széchy, A., & Zilahy, G. (2015). Corporate sustainability footprints—A review of current practices. Corporate carbon and climate accounting, 45-76. | |
