The Centre for Policy Development and Essential Media Communications presents:
Our debt to nature – We need what nature provides, but do we really know how much we’re using & how much is left to use?
Pati Poblete | Global Footprint Network
Join us upstairs at The Norfolk Hotel on Thursday, 7 April at 5.30pm to hear Pati Poblete from the international think tank Global Footprint Network discuss how governments are measuring their country’s ecological footprint to design and deliver a sustainable economy.
Even though Australia is one the most biologically diverse countries on the planet, we’re at risk of falling behind the rest of the world in understanding how to arrest the decline in the health of our natural environment.
Pati will also reveal Global Footprint Network’s latest research about Australia’s ecological challenges and opportunities.
Global Footprint Network’s visit to Australia coincides with the development of our Sustainable Economy program, which aims to highlight options for Australia to make a rapid transition to an environmentally sustainable economy.
About Pati Poblete
Director, World Outreach and Media
Pati is charged with developing Global Footprint Network’s Communications strategy, communicating our activities to the public and helping to raise global awareness about the Ecological Footprint and our work. Prior to joining Global Footprint Network, Pati was a journalist for 15 years, working as a columnist and editorial writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, deputy editorial page editor for the Honolulu Advertiser and staff editor at numerous Bay Area daily newspapers. Her yearlong editorial series on foster care reform in California for the San Francisco Chronicle helped lead to numerous changes in the state law, and won her numerous national awards, including first place in the National Headliners Award, Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Chi Award and the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Pati was also the Chronicle’s nominee for Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing in 2006 and 2007. She is the author of “The Oracles: My Filipino Grandparents in America”.
About Global Footprint Network
Global Footprint Network is an international think tank working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use and who uses what. By making ecological limits central to decision-making, we are working to end overshoot and create a society where all people can live well, within the means of one planet. Global Footprint Network defines overshoot as a systemic problem, of which climate change and water shortage are symptoms, as are collapsed fisheries, deforestation, soil degradation and species loss. It is a problem that threatens all societies and economies and, at the same time, disproportionately and most gravely threatens the world’s poor. In 2003, Global Footprint Network was launched, using a bold and breakthrough notion: that the problem of overshoot could begin to be addressed through a resource accounting system. As of today, the Ecological Footprint is the only resource accounting tool that can measure both the availability of the planet’s ecological resources as well as our use of them. Since its foundation, Global Footprint Network has been a key player in advancing the science and use of the Footprint, supporting a world-wide effort to make the Footprint an ever more robust and credible measure of human demand on the biosphere. As ecological pressures deepen, it is becoming increasingly risky for governments to maintain resource- and carbon-intensive economies, and increasingly advantageous for them to lead the way in sustainability policy and innovation.
