What does it mean to live on an island? Is it to be independent from, or inexorably dependent on the rest of the world? And when the ecosystem's physical limitations are so clearly circumscribed, do people behave more "environmentally"?

In this episode, we visit Adam's home island of Galiano, and find out just how big its ecological footprint really is.

– – –

Explore the full One Island, One Earth report (and interactive map)

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Full credits, citations, transcript, and lots more at futureecologies.net/listen/fe-4-6-an-island-unto-itself

You are listening to Season Four of

Future Ecologies

What I've been told is that the main source, the

main, lifeblood, the main thing for connecting us was the

waterways — was the ocean, was the different straits. And so

the whole island was accessed through our canoes. You don't

park your canoe here, travel up the island to the other end, get

on another canoe and come back to your canoe. And so this idea

of one continuous part of the island, and having one name for

that whole strip, just it didn't make sense. It wasn't necessary.

It wasn't necessarily helpful.

Places like Galliano didn't traditionally have one name for

the whole island, it was the waterways that had whole names.

And then each spot on the island was given to different families,

or under their their rights and responsibilities for care and

use of that area at different times of the year. Each Bay,

each inlet, each point of the island had its own name, and

each name was tied to a different family, a different

house, a different community, and through the names and how

the names are attached to people's names was how you

understood the place. But growing up, the water was a

barrier. Traditionally, that wasn't the way it should be. The

water should be the connection.

Welcome back. I'm Wil and I'll be your host for

this episode. The voice you just heard is Levi Wilson.

[Hul’qi’minum introduction] Levi Wilson. And

I'm a member of the Gitga'at first nation, with strong family

connections to the Lamalcha peoples of what's now known as

Penelakut Island. I lived most of my life on Galiano

Galiano — that long, narrow stretch of land in

the Salish Sea, sandwiched between Vancouver and Vancouver

Island. It's one of many islands here, part of an archipelago

known as the Southern Gulf Islands, or, as it continues

across the invisible threshold to the United States, the San

Juans. Today, just under 1400 people live here. And people

have lived here for a long time.

People have been everywhere on this coast since

forever. Since time immemorial is the phrase — time immemorial,

meaning time out of mind, time beyond what we can conceive.

People have been here and have shaped so many different parts

of our environment around us. Things that we take for granted

now, are actually constructed.

We're meeting today at a place in English known as Montague

Harbor, that I've since come to know as Sum’new’, which means

the encircling place or the enclosed place, or something

related to that. It is what some people would call a midden I

call it a manufactured landscape. It is a site where, I

assume, many, many generations of my ancestors have helped

cultivate the landscape to promote growth of life, promote

safety, in the inner harbor to make this place better over

1000s and 1000s of years.

You can see here where the original part of the land was.

And then above it have been centuries and centuries and

centuries of deposits of various shells, other refuse that people

call — that archaeologists in particular call midden. But it's

not just a dumping ground. This wasn't just "we have all this

garbage, and we need somewhere to put it". It was "we have all

this stuff that can help us turn this environment into something

that's more practical, more powerful, more plentiful for

everybody that's coming later".

It's that type of mentality that shifts from "what do I need to

do to get rid of the stuff that I have now", to "how can I help

all of the future generations". All the people that dumped stuff

here that that created this landscape that put these layers

and layers and layers across the entirety of what's now the park

would never have benefited from what they were creating. It took

centuries after they finished dumping for to actually turn it

into the type of kind of for environment that is needed. And

so it's that long term, long care thought that goes into it

that that has made this place ancestrally so powerful, special

and important.

When we say we claim it, we don't have full claim to every

square inch of the island. That is colonial way of thinking that

is not the traditional way of thinking, you know, throw a

blanket over everything and say that that's yours. You have

different rights and responsibilities in different

places, it's part of the seasonal round. And that

seasonal round overlaps, where even at different times of the

year different peoples will have connection. That's why — that's

why a place like Galliano can have 37 different first nations

that have some form of claim. And it gets really complicated

if you only view the island as one whole thing separate from

the other islands around it.

So we're going to talk about what it means to be

an island — to be separated and to be connected. To do that,

we're going to take a snapshot of how people live here and see

what we can learn from the footprints we make, and the

fingerprints we leave behind

From Future Ecologies, this is an island unto itself.

Broadcasting from the unseeded shared and

asserted territories of the Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum

Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples.

This is Future Ecologies — exploring the shape of our world

through ecology, design and sound.

I won't be hosting this alone, by the way. Mendel

is here too.

Hey. Wait... where's Adam?

Well, Adam is on the other side of the

microphone, this episode. He's going to be a subject, not a

host.

Okay. Why is that?

Well, Adam is a bit close to the story. Let's

just say.

He's part of it.

Yeah.

We get to talk about it.

Yeah.

What is it? What's the story?

Well, it's a story about these little microcosms

that we call islands.

Islands have been the kinds of places where people

have learned things about the world that they couldn't learn

other ways. I think the most famous example is with Darwin,

and his finches on the Galapagos.

It was those finches and their diversity of

beak shapes, for different foods on different islands, that

played a key role in Darwin's theory of natural selection.

I didn't grow up on an island, I grew up in

suburbia. Galiano feels a lot less isolated than the suburban

communities that I grew up in, in many ways. It's connected to

all of the other islands in the archipelago we live in and all

the other communities around it.

And this, of course, is Adam.

Listeners may recognize my voice. I am the

restoration coordinator for the Galileo conservancy when I'm not

doing Future Ecologies, and I guess I'm responsible for this,

this project [laughs]

Very mysterious. What... what is this project?

Well, it's called the One Island, One Earth

project.

Very catchy.

Yeah. And it's about measuring the ecological

footprint of Galiano Island,

Okay. Is this the point where I find out what

an ecological footprint is?

It is! Okay. So, an ecological footprint is the

amount of resource-producing land that is needed to support a

person, a community, a nation activity, whatever. It's an area

of land that represents what they consume, in terms of food

and materials, and also what is needed to sequester the carbon

dioxide waste that they produce. An ecological footprint is

measured in global hectares.

What is a global hectare?! ...what is a hectare?

Okay, so a hectare is a square. That's 100 meters

by 100 meters.

Oh, it's metric.

Yeah.

So what is a global hectare?

A global hectare is equivalent to a hectare of

land with the average biological productivity in a given year.

That is of primary producers — plants, in other words.

Okay, so a hectare is just like, an area.

Yeah.

10,000 square meters.

Yeah.

But a global hectare is a hectare with some

plants on it.

Yeah.

And the amount of plants is somewhere, kind of

in the exact middle between, like, the Gobi desert and the

Amazon.

Kinda.

Kinda.

Yeah.

It's like the average productive hectare.

Exactly. So you know, if you're trying to

measure your ecological footprint and planted hectares,

you wouldn't really be able to find an answer, because it would

very much depend on where the hectare was. So using the unit

of global hectares kind of removes that problem.

Gotcha.

So your footprint is the consumptive side of the

How much of this average productive area we use

on an annual basis to support our lifestyles. The other side

of this equation is called Biocapacity.

We're getting a lot of definitions right off the

top.

Oh, yeah.

What is biocapacity?

So, the most succinct way to put it is that

it's the ability of any given area on Earth to produce

resources that us humans need to live our lives and also to

assimilate our carbon dioxide waste.

Just us humans.

Yeah, that's actually one of the explicit

limitations of the ecological footprinting process. It's only

concerned with human needs.

Okay...

So to understand biocapacity, we can kind of use

a money metaphor.

Alright?

Imagine an area of land is your bank account?

Sure.

And then what grows and reproduces on that

land every year is the interest.

...Got it.

So you could live without depleting any savings,

just by gathering that interest and living off that interest

every year. But if you withdraw more than you're making on

interest every year, eventually, you're gonna run out. So the

biocapacity is the interest. It's what regrows every year.

And your ecological footprint is how much you take out of the

bank account.

Okay, cool. This is making sense.

Great. So dealing with these numbers, global

hectares of biocapacity, global hectares of ecological

footprint, it can start to feel a bit abstract.

Right? I mean, I, I have no idea how many

global hectares I'm consuming, let alone how many should be

consuming,

You're not alone. So to make it a little easier to

comprehend, you can convert your footprint to Earth equivalents.

Or in other words, how many Planet Earths we would need if

everyone lived the same way as you or your community.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that, that is

probably more than one Earth for most of us.

Oh, yeah. Certainly, most of us listening

to this podcast right now.

So what is a fair share? How many global

hectares can my footprint be if I'm shooting for, you know

exactly one earth?

Well, if you take the biocapacity of the entire

Earth, which counts all the land and the continental shelves, and

divide it by the number of people living on the planet, you

get just over 1.5 global hectares per person, at least as

of 2021.

Oh, interesting. There's just kind of a nice

mnemonic there, right? Like, we're aiming for less than 1.5

degrees of warming, relative to pre industrial levels. And we

should also be aiming for 1.5 global hectares per person.

Yeah, well, maximum. And on that note, we're

currently at 1.2 degrees.

Yeah, I guess we're all on one big, finite

island. But this whole thing sounds a lot like a concept that

I that I have heard of, and that is carrying capacity. Right?

Like we're talking about how many people Planet Earth can

support. Isn't this kind of the same thing?

Carrying capacity is a tool that is more

commonly used for animal populations — knowing how much

space they need, and those types of things. Applying that to

humans is, I want to say, impossible. Our consumption

patterns are so different and so far from each other. Think of

what I would use day to day, compared to millionaire day to

day. We can't just create a carrying capacity based on that.

This is Michelle Thompson

And I'm currently the One Island One

Earth coordinator at the Galiano Conservancy.

The goal of the One Island One Earth project is

to do a first of its kind ecological footprinting and

biocapacity survey for Galiano. Adam started the project, got

the funding, and is kind of the spokesperson. But Michelle

basically did all the work on the One Island One Earth Project

[suppressed laughter]

[Laughing] I'm familiar with this relationship.

Just kidding. Just kidding. Adam is a big overachiever.

The other point about carrying capacity is it's

looking at a given population of animals within a specific area

and all of the resources available to them in that area.

The thing about people is that we don't rely on the resources

just in our local areas. In fact, oftentimes, we hardly rely

on any of the resources in our local areas. Galiano Island is

an example of a community where people who lived here up until

very recently derived a lot of their basic needs from the lands

and waters here. And now, derive very little of them, right?

Maybe more so than than your average city dweller, but that's

a big change. And so you can essentially have as many people

as you want, almost living in an area if you're importing all of

their basic needs from elsewhere.

Right... okay, so you're you're outsourcing

your biocapacity. When you're not using the things that are

local, you're bringing them in.

Totally. And those things that you bring in still

show up under ecological footprint, right? So ecological

footprint and carrying capacity aren't the same thing. But even

though they're different, it was that question — of "do humans

even have a carrying capacity" that gave rise to the concept of

the ecological footprint in the first place.

Well, it all started with having come to UBC as a

wet-behind-the-ears ecologist, I thought I had a lot of answers

as to the nature of the growing human dilemma that we, you know,

we call the environmental crisis.

This is Dr. William Rees, professor emeritus of Community

and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia.

But although I taught and was even the director of the

planning school for a number of years, I'm a population

ecologist. The ecological footprint analysis was one of

the things that I originated and co-developed with a variety of

my students. That's it, that's all you need to know about that.

No wait! I want to know more. Why did they

decide to invent the footprint,

I kept running up against colleagues who were

economists. So for example, at one point, I had given a seminar

on the concept of human carrying capacity: the idea that at any

given standard of living the earth, or any territory, such as

Galliano island can support only so many people. And I was taken

aside after that talk by a very senior Canadian resource

economist. And what he was arguing was that economics had

abolished the concept of carrying capacity. Because after

all, human ingenuity could substitute for nature.

Right. This is that whole technocratic kind of

argument that we... we adapt, and we overcome, and we escape

those animal limitations.

Totally. But William and his students didn't

see it that way. So they used footprinting as a way to make a

simple point.

On Earth today, there are about 12 and a half billion hectares

of biologically or ecologically productive land. The human

ecological footprint is 20 billion hectares. So we're using

the earth as if it were about 75% larger than it actually is.

But even a child would ask how can you use something that isn't

there?

Oh, it's me... the child. Yeah, okay.

And the answer is because we're depleting

accumulated assets, so that as we destroy the soils, as we

wreck the tropical forests, as we pollute the oceans as the

dead zones increased, Earth is in effect, shrinking. The

availability of really useful productive assets is getting

smaller, even as the total demand by the human population,

and growing incomes is getting larger.

So just because we can't measure carrying capacity for humans in

the way that we do for other animals, doesn't mean that we

don't depend on, or have a measurable impact on our

environment. We might escape resource limitations at a local

or even regional level, but we can't outrun them forever, at

the planetary level.

So that's the ecological footprint in a nutshell. But

remember, this episode is also about islands.

These little pieces of land surrounded by

water, which you can describe as being isolated, but through the

water being connected to each other. And I think this

in-between, which is not the one and not the other is just

fascinating.

This is Dr. Beata Ratter.

Yeah, I'm Professor of integrated

Geography at the University of Hamburg in Germany. And I'm

dedicated to research coastal areas and small islands.

So, Mendel...

Wil.

When you think of an island, what comes to mind?

Oh, you know, an island is like, a hill in the

middle of the ocean. Out here, you need to get to it by a ferry

— if you can get to it at all, without your own means. Yeah,

they're, they're kind of separated and in so many

different ways. They're separated socially. They're

separated physically, they're separated economically. And I

think there are just inevitable tensions of being outside the

economic nexus, which is the mainland. But also I think

that's the reason why many people seek it out. So yeah,

that's that's what I think of when I think of islands.

Well, Beata has another idea.

I think you can have two pictures in your mind:

a specific Island, which is this definition, a piece of land

surrounded by water, and you think that it's definite and

it's exact, and there is a boundary. But if you look

closer, there is no real boundary. And there is no real

limitation because each island population is specifically

identified through the connection to other islands or

to the mainland.

Oh, I mean, that's so much like what Levi

was saying at the beginning, right? Like, the water is this

connective tissue. And it's not, not so much just these little

nuclear conceptions of a piece of land all by itself.

Yeah.

I really appreciate that framing.

Well get ready, because in her recent book,

Beata makes the case that in a way, an island is really a kind

of mental construct.

For example, an oasis in the desert can be an

island. And in the original definition, it's not surrounded

by water, it's surrounded by sand. But it's still this

concept of islandness. The same comes true for villages in high

mountains. So they are not surrounded by waters, but

villages in the high mountains are some way isolated from other

places, but they need to be connected to other places in

order to survive. So the mental construct means that it's a

definition which happens in your mind, and which is not a

geographical definition of an island.

We create islandness. Islands don't just

exist... out there.

Yep.

That's amazing.

We're standing on a mental construct right now.

And Beata loves to challenge other stereotypes about islands.

For one, the idea that people who live there are somehow

special, the so called "Noble Islanders".

There is no Noble Islander, they're just as normal

people. They are not behaving better or worse than

Mainlanders. But small communities, either on islands

or on the mainland, have bonds and have close bonds. So yes, if

you ask me, there is isolation, but it's relative. And it's not

definitely all small islands are isolated. If you think in the

Pacific region, for example, the people in former times they

learned to travel by sea, and they connected the whole area.

It's this understanding of we are a sea of islands. And I

think that explains it very much that you do not necessarily be

isolated or feel isolated, if you have the means to be

connected. And if you have your lifestyle to be connected to

other places.

Besides her knowledge of islands, I'm

introducing you to Beate because of an ecological footprinting

project she did in 2009.

So I was dreaming of doing such an ecological

footprint calculation on a Island.

Sounds familiar.

Yeah. Except this was the first time anyone had

done such a thing. Because it's not exactly a trivial exercise.

The raw data that you need isn't just laying around. So Beate

chose her Island carefully. A tiny German community in the

North Sea, called Helgoland.

Many people dream of going once in their life to

Helgoland — based on its history, and based on its

location

Helgoland has a kind of mythic, rugged history

in German culture. Today, it's actually got almost the same

around 1200 people, but it's much much

denser since the whole island is less than two square kilometers.

For centuries, it was known as a pirates hideaway. As a

territory, it was officially possessed by Denmark, Britain,

and then eventually Germany, and usually put towards tactical

military ends. Then, towards the end of World War Two, the island

was effectively flattened by bombing campaigns.

Oh, scary.

Yeah. And that's actually part of the reason why

Helgoland was an interesting place for Beate to make the

first ecological footprint of an island. It's culturally German,

but all the infrastructure is basically brand new. I mean, in

European terms — new as of 1950. And that's not the only thing

that made it a little more straightforward to study

Helgoland is so small, that you have no car

traffic in Hagar land, you walk around or you take a bicycle,

you do not need a car, then we are in temperate climate, you do

not need an air condition.

And that's not all. Basically, no food is grown

on Helgoland. Everything the islanders eat is imported. Their

drinking water came from a desalination plant, and their

electricity was from a diesel generator.

Right. Okay, so it's about as close to a closed

system as you could hope for

Exactly. Although the economy of Helgoland is

largely driven by tourism, so once again, isolated but

connected.

All right, so we've got this perfect little

demonstration plot for studying the footprint of islands. What

did she find? Was Helgoland, like, a tiny bastion of

sustainability?

The footprint in the end, as we calculated was

6.8 hectares per capita, which is beyond Berlin, way beyond the

world,

That's 1.1 global hectares more than the average

German citizen. In 2009. The people of Helgoland were living

like we had almost four Earths of biocapacity.

Wow. And that's assuming that all of it is for

people.

Yeah...

That we are entitled to the the total bio

capacity of the Earth.

Yeah. And at that time, the world average

ecological footprint was 2.7 global hectares per person, or

just over one and a half Earths

Islands... Not so idyllic, after all.

No, but it's a data point, right? A snapshot in

time. Because if you want to live more sustainably tomorrow,

it's important to look at how you're living right now. And

where you can improve. And so really, this study is the reason

why we're talking about islands at all.

Yeah, it was looking at Dr. Beate Ratter's

work on the little island of Helgoland in Germany that

sparked it for us here.

Okay so, Adam got inspired and borrowed the

concept for this island.

That's right.

And here we are.

Here we are.

So Helgoland 6.8 global hectares, and the world

average is 2.7.

In 2009, yeah.

Okay. So, thanks to Adam, Michelle, their

collaborators. We have an idea where Galiano sits. Where does

Galiano sit? What's... what's the number?

[Long pause] We'll get to that...

No!

Right after the break.

No!!

Welcome back, I'm Wil, this is Mendel, and you're

listening to Future Ecologies. Today we're talking about

ecological footprints, we're talking about islands, and we're

talking about the ecological footprint of Galiano Island.

The numbers! Come on, give me the results. Is

this hippie-dippie island paradise just an illusion?

You asked for numbers I'm gonna give you some

numbers.

Future Ecologies regular, Adam Huggins, wearing

his day job hat at the Galiano Conservancy. Drumroll please.

We learned that if every human community in the

world had the same footprint as the Galiano Island community

does, we'd need the equivalent of 4.3 Earth's to support us

all.

Yikes.

If we're speaking the language of global hectares,

the Galiano Island community requires an average of 6.8

global hectares per person in 2021. That is the exact same

amount of global hectares that Helgoland required about a

decade ago.

Hmm, that's a pretty wild coincidence.

It is. And it should be said that since then,

the community of Helgoland has made great strides to reduce

their footprint and live more sustainably. But for Galiano,

the story gets worse. Not only is this a big footprint, it's

bigger than what the island could even hypothetically

provide.

Like, even if it were that mythical island unto

itself, it still wouldn't be enough.

Yeah.

Our footprint is smaller than the average

Canadian footprint, but larger than the footprint of nearby

urban communities like Vancouver and Victoria, and significantly

larger than what would be consistent with an equitable and

sustainable footprint at a planetary scale. And even for

the scale of the island.

Wait, just a second. Before the break, you

said that the Helgoland footprint was the equivalent of

four Earths right?

Yeah.

How can Galiano's be 4.3 Earth's if it's

exactly the same number of global hectares?

Well, you have to remember that these are always

snapshots in time. To get that Earth equivalent number you take

the global hectare per capita of a community and you divide it by

the global hectares that are available for every human being

on the planet.

And you know that number changes, because the

human population of the planet is growing. And so if you had

the same amount of biocapacity and a growing population, you

still have less per person over time.

So every year, a single global hectare becomes

more valuable in a sense — as your fair share of the Earth's

biocapacity shrinks.

And that's because of human population growth. But

it's also because of environmental degradation.

Right? When you're overspending the Earth's resources. when

you're in overshoot, you're by definition, drawing down that,

you know, biocapital. You're liquidating ecosystems, and

you're reducing the planet's ability to support us.

Eeesh... overshoot... that kind of says

it all.

Yeah, it's actually a technical term in the

world of ecological footprints. There's even a day: Earth

Overshoot Day — when the planet as a whole consumes more than

its biocapacity for the year.

Uhhh... when is that?

We'll be there soon, actually, probably before

this episode comes out. I think this year, it's expected to be

at the end of July.

But this question of overpopulation is

pretty fraught, right? Like, if you start talking about making

policy around birth rates, it's... it's easy to see why

that's like.... fascistic.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the question quickly

becomes "who shouldn't be here?" As in "who shouldn't be alive?"

And I don't think anybody should have the power to answer that.

Ne neither. At least... outside of a one-womb

radius?

Yes, we are pro bodily autonomy and pro choice

here.

Yes.

But when it comes to measuring footprints, the

math is pretty clear.

The ecological footprint of a population is the product of two

the size of that population multiplied by the

average per capita consumption. So in simple arithmetic, they're

equivalent. Nobody wants to talk about population growth. It's a

taboo subject still.

Once again, this is Dr. William Reese, who co-invented this

whole eco footprint thing. And to be clear, he's not advocating

for any kind of coercive population control. But in his

opinion, we can't just avoid the problem. Of course, population

makes a much bigger difference, where the per capita footprint

is already high, which basically tracks with wealth.

Reducing the population of Canada by 10, would be the

equivalent of reducing the population in India by say, 60,

or some such number. Because the fewer rich people there are the

far better off the planet is in relative terms.

But stopping short of eating the rich —

Oh... okay.

— I would say we don't have that many levers to

pull, or at least, that I think we want to pull, to reduce

population in any kind of coordinated way. Instead, I

think we need to put our focus on what we can change in this

generation,

Such as? Like, how can we bring that per capita

footprint down?

Well, that's exactly the point of doing the

to see where you can make the biggest impact in

your community. So let's break down the 4.3 Earths that go into

Galiano's footprint.

Right off the bat, about 1.4 of those Earths is

just the Galiano Island population's fair share of the

footprint of the Canadian government. So that is like the

provinces and the federal government, all the services

that they provide health care, military, police, the

administrative state, all that kind of stuff has a footprint

that's already larger than one planet, if you look at it at a

population scale.

Yikes. Okay, so Galliano is already in

overshoot, before we even get to the island, just from the

services of the state.

Yeah.

That's not exactly something local

communities have any control over though. And it's like 40%

of Galliano's whole footprint.

Yeah, that definitely falls into the 'big

systems change' bucket. But if you look at it in another way,

there are almost two thirds that can be changed just by the way

people live their lives. And that brings me to another famous

use of the word footprint.

So, Mendel...

Wil.

What do you think of when you hear the words

"carbon footprint"?

I think it's a good rhetorical device to make

us feel individually responsible for things that are systemic.

Do you know where that term comes from?

I don't, actually. Which... which came

first the ecological footprint or the carbon footprint?

The ecological footprint came first in 1992.

William Rees intended it as a way of looking at whole

communities, and includes carbon as I mentioned. The personal

carbon footprint was invented in 2005 by none other than British

Petroleum.

BP?

Yeah.

Biggest marine oil spill in the history of the

world BP?

Yeah, that was Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of

Mexico in 2010.

Yeah, well, that tracks.

But just a few years earlier, they had coined

this term carbon footprint as a part of a public relations

campaign, which, like you were saying before, puts the

responsibility to reduce carbon waste on the individual and

masks the responsibility of this large oil company. While making

it seem like they care about this kind of thing, right?

Yeah. We made it measurable. And we made it your

problem.

Exactly. So you can use footprint measurements

you can use them to feel individual

guilt, blame or shame — you know, like when billionaires use

their private jets to commute across town. But they're just as

useful, I think, in showing things that people could do

collectively. It really just depends on the framing. So let's

get back to Galliano and see what can affect the biggest

change.

It's stuff like our transportation,

transportation is by far and away the biggest chunk of the

community level footprint, right? The footprint minus the

government services,

Just looking at the 2.6 Earth's in that

community level footprint, transportation accounts for 40%

of it — almost half.

Okay, so people drive, people fly, and people

use the ferry, right? Which should be the priority?

It's actually a pretty even split. Each of those

counts for about 1/3 of the transportation footprint.

And there's nuance in there, too. We found that

Galiano islanders drive a lot less than people from the

surrounding urban communities, but we're ferry dependent. And

so the ferries add just a huge chunk on there. So of course,

electrifying the ferries would be a huge deal.

And interestingly, while they drive less, Galiano

folks are flying almost twice as much as the BC average.

Okay, so electrify everything and fly a

lot less. Easy.

[Laughs] Yes, everyone should definitely do

that. With the climate crisis as urgent as it is, anytime you can

replace fossil fuels with electricity, it's a good thing.

If people are weighing whether they should

electrify their heating, if they're on fossil fuels, versus

whether they should install solar panels. Well, if you can

afford to do both, great. But if you can only afford to do one,

electrify your heating first, right? We worry about the

electrification first, and then the source of that renewable

energy second,

But this is also a great example of the limits of

an ecological footprint analysis. Here's Michelle

Thompson again.

How we get our electricity here in BC is, from

an ecological footprint perspective (I'm going to do air

quotes) "cleaner" than if we were to live in Alberta, because

it's a lot more heavy on on fossil fuel usage for things

like electric heating, and all that type of stuff. But what it

doesn't account for is the damage that dams do in those

communities. The disruption of those areas, species that it

affects is not measured within this.

Dams and hydropower are low carbon, so

they look great on ecological footprint, but they have lots of

other consequences.

Can I plug our two-part series on dams from

season one?

Are those the ones where you pretended to be fish?

[Laughs] Those are episodes 9 and 10. But yeah,

dams are bad for salmon. They're bad for estuaries. They're bad

for rivers, in general.

Totally. So these numbers can tell us something's

important things, but they can't tell us everything. Another big

limitation of the ecological footprint is how it considers

drinking water. This footprint calculation only counts the

infrastructure, the building materials and like the literal

area used up.

But for a small rural community where people

have individual wells on individual properties, the

materials involved in that are are not very significant. And so

it looks like we have no footprint for our water. But we

are using a lot of water as a community on an island that is

quite droughty. So we have this conundrum where you know, the

ecological footprint says you should densify your community

because you're taking up too much space per person. And on

the other hand, we have a lot of communities here where they're

already using too much water. And you know, thankfully, there

are technologies such as rainwater harvesting, that can

help address that. But you know, there are other considerations

that the ecological footprint is blind to that we have to make as

a community.

Every Island is unique after all. So how can you

take this kind of rigid framework and make it right for

where you live?

I have no idea.

By doing what Beate Ratter calls an ecological

fingerprint.

Nice. How do you measure a fingerprint?

You do not measure. You describe.

An ecological fingerprint is exactly what it

sounds like. It's the identity of that place. The story, the

attitudes and values. And unlike the footprint, there isn't a

recipe.

There was really no roadmap for it. But we

decided that it would be a combination of, of course,

surveys of the community — asking questions, basic

questions — but also interviewing old timers, elders,

indigenous people who've been around a really long time and

can remember a lot of the changes that have occurred here.

We interviewed people who remember the very first

electrification events on the island before there was any

public utility or anything like that, you know, somebody bought

a generator that was too large for their own needs, and said to

their neighbors, "Well, I'll sell you some power. Let's

string up some lines." And they would just go out, and they

built a utility that way. This is back when they were heating

the one room schoolhouse with oil drums. We found people who

can remember much farther back than that,

That interview with Levi Wilson from the top —

It's just one of 23 different interviews that capture the

fingerprint of the island. And unsurprisingly, the story of

Galiano depends on who you ask. Like anywhere. It's varied and

complex, but one event stands out in defining the shape of the

island as it is today.

What happened?

Well, to make a really, really long story short,

in the 1970s, this massive forestry company, Macmillan

Bloedel

Like, Bloedel conservatory? Where Adam and I

visited that stinky flower.

The very same. At that time, MacMillan Bloedel.

Literally owned more than half of the land base of Galiano

Island.

Half!?

Yeah. And they had a lot of goodwill from the

community. Not only were there jobs in this regional forestry

economy, the company was also bankrolling all sorts of local

resources, like the fire department.

And kind of like the Conservatory in Vancouver.

Yeah, you could say that. But then in the late

70s, they decided to liquidate all their forestry holdings on

the island,

Liquidate?

As in harvest all at once — clear cut.

Oh, how did that go down?

Not great. But for a few different reasons.

Environmentalists were obviously not happy about it. But more

significantly, there was backlash from folks who simply

thought that clear cutting was bad long term timber management.

It wasn't that they were against forestry. Not at all. They just

didn't want the industry to boom and then inevitably bust. So the

community really soured on MacMillan Bloedel. There was an

attempt to come to a compromise, allowing logging to proceed

without resorting to clear cuts, but it didn't pan out. Huge

tracts of the island were logged.

Now keep in mind that these forests, although they had been

owned by Macmillan Bloedel, they were effectively public spaces.

Lots of people would make use of them to harvest firewood or

nettles or mushrooms. But after the forests were cleared, the

land was sold for private development, and public access

was a thing of the past.

That sounds heartbreaking.

Yeah, for many people it was. It turned out

that MacMillan Bloedel had been planning to develop their

holdings into a Whistler Blackcomb-style resort on

Galiano, which would be like a big deal and kind of adding

insult to injury.

No kidding.

But the islanders got organized, they protected

some of the most valuable areas, and passed local bylaws to block

the development. It got really ugly. There was even a SLAPP

lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court of BC. But it

worked.

Right, yeah, I don't see a huge Blackcomb

resort anywhere around here.

No. So all that was left for MacMillan Bloedel

to do was sell their land and leave. But here's where things

when they sold, they did so with the explicit

pretense that the land could be developed by the new owners.

Oh, so the people who bought the land were

stuck because of those new bylaws.

Exactly. And so for a long time, the island

community was pretty much split along those lines. You had folks

who were frustrated that they couldn't do what they wanted

with the land they bought, folks who were gun-shy about any kind

of development whatsoever, plus everyone who was displaced by

the rapidly shifting resource economy when forestry flamed

out. This deadlock is a big part of the reason why Galiano is as

spread out and rural as it is today. Which, as we know now,

has a major impact on its literal footprint: the amount of

land that each resident takes up.

So that's the fingerprint of Galiano.

That's a small but significant part of it. And it

will definitely inform what kinds of footprint reducing

strategies might work best here, because this was not only a

formative moment, politically, but it also marked a real shift

in the islanders way of life.

The people who've lived here — until very

recently, but extending back to time immemorial — they fished

for sustenance and for trade. They hunted deer and other

species, including grouse and black ducks. And they relied on

the resources that were in the forest, and in more

recent times for timber. Right? It's really fishing, hunting and

forestry of various kinds that have been the mainstays of

Galiano Island.

Some people do still participate in those

activities in a small way, but they're no longer the lifeblood

of Galiano as they had been for millennia. Instead, like so many

of the Gulf Islands, the economy has become much more centered on

tourism.

Oh, interesting. You're... you're basically

saying that this whole forestry conflict with MacMillan Bloedel,

and the threat of development. This was sort of the moment that

galvanized people away from relying on what the island

provides. There's all this local biocapacity, but no one is using

it anymore.

Yeah, well, it is being used. Most of Galiano

island's biocapacity is currently engaged in

sequestering all the greenhouse gases that we produce as a

species. But it is possible to preserve all that carbon storage

and still rely more directly on the islands ecosystems. And one

of the key recommendations of the footprint analysis is

exactly that. The relocalization of the economy.

Beate RatterTwo key words:

circular economy, and regional

Beate RatterTwo key words:

economy. So think of what you can produce locally, and steer

Beate RatterTwo key words:

the economy locally, as well on the island, yeah? If you have to

Beate RatterTwo key words:

import timber to do construction, on a place where

Beate RatterTwo key words:

you have timber production possibilities, this is

Beate RatterTwo key words:

ridiculous. It's absolutely not at all about clear cutting. It's

Beate RatterTwo key words:

the sustainable management of a forest which is ecologically

Beate RatterTwo key words:

sound, and where you have different age groups of trees,

Beate RatterTwo key words:

and you harvest the timber you need for the construction site.

Beate RatterTwo key words:

And you need some Mother trees — some old old trees, so it's not

Beate RatterTwo key words:

that beyond a certain age it's got to be cut. No, it's the

Beate RatterTwo key words:

management of a diversified forest.

So we definitely should electrify the ferries,

and electrify our homes and our cars. But I don't think we

should ignore the fact that there is a real precedent for a

very different kind of sustainable transportation.

It's called the canoe. And there is an

incredible, rich culture of canoes in this region, with

Coast Salish and Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples. That is a

beautiful example of what today we would call circular economy.

Right, that trees are stewarded for generations until they are

large enough to create the kinds of large canoes that are needed

for that kind of transportation to be viable. And then those

canoes have their life and then eventually they return to the

ecosystem, right? It's a beautiful example of circular

economy, and extremely efficient in terms of transportation.

There's no emissions associated with that. And then you

transform the waterways from what they are currently for most

of us — which is a barrier between islands that prevents us

from getting to visit our neighbors over on the island

next door — into the actual channels of transportation.

I'm not suggesting that this is a solution for

tomorrow. Our civic infrastructure simply isn't

designed around canoe travel, and the last monumental cedars

were logged off the island decades ago. But look around

look at the middens; look at the Camas meadows; at these

manufactured landscapes; at the work of generation after

generation, not just protecting, but shaping and giving life to

the land and sea. Let it remind you that we don't have to do

everything. We just have to do our part.

So, circling back to the question we started this episode

what can we learn from the footprint and the

fingerprint of an island? Well, in a way, Island communities

like this one are amazing illustrations of the paradox of

living on Earth circa 2022. Nearly every aspect of life on

and off islands is dependent on these complex interconnected

global supply chains and relationships. And at the same

time, we're pretty isolated from one another — each living in our

own bubbles.

If an island is a state of mind, then maybe those of us who live

on the mainland should try it on once in a while — to remind us

that no one else is going to do the hard work for us if we want

to live more sustainably. But it's also on us to discover how

those changes can make our lives better, in ways that at first

might be hard to imagine. We just have to look around at our

community at its opportunities and challenges and get to work.

If you do happen to live on Galiano, or somewhere like it,

you might want to consider the reverse: that no Island is an

island unto itself. Rather than sitting in isolation and going

it alone, we have to reforge those connections; to stop

defining ourselves as an island, but instead as a sea.

Thank you, Wil.

Future Ecologies is an independent production.

And although Adam is both part of this podcast and the Galiano

Conservancy Association, this episode was not funded by the

GCA or any of the grants for the footprint study.

So if you liked it, please support us. This

podcast is possible because of our community on Patreon. Join

us at futureecologies.net/patrons or

hit the link in the show notes, where you'll also find a link to

the entire footprint and fingerprint analysis for Galiano

Island — all 211 pages of it. Or, if you prefer, condensed

into an emoji-laden, interactive map.

This episode was produced by myself, Wil Henry

And me, Mendel Skulski. Wil was our intern for

this episode, and now that they've graduated from J school,

they're looking for a real job. They were an absolute pleasure

to work with, so please, hire them.

In this episode, you heard the voices of Levi

Wilson, Adam Huggins, Michelle Thompson, William Rees and Beate

Ratter.

And music by Thunberg, SHIITAKE, Modern

Biology, Velems, and Sunfish Moon Light.

We also want to thank Terra Tailleur,

Sleight of Hand Sound,

Nicholas Friedman,

The Sitka Foundation,

and the Galiano Conservancy Association.

And if I may, I'd like to thank the Vancouver

Foundation, Vancity, the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions,

the Global Footprint Network, the BCIT Centre for Ecocities,

CHRM Consulting, all of our partner organizations on and off

Galiano Island, and the many, many people who shared

information with us, filled out our surveys, sat down for

interviews, and provided feedback. Thank you.

As usual, we have a ton of citations. You can

find those and lots more on our website: futureecologies.net

That's it for this one.

Thanks for listening