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Happenings in the Keweenaw Peninsula February 22, 2005 Press Release and photo © 2005 Michigan Tech Environmental Sustainability Committee. Reprinted with permission.

Susan Burns: How big is your ecological footprint? Find out Feb. 25

HOUGHTON--Susan Burns, managing director of the Global Footprint Network, will give a presentation, "Lighten Up: Explore Sustainability with the Ecological Footprint," at 6 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 25, in Room U115 of the Minerals and Materials Engineering Building at Michigan Technological University. The event is free and open to the public.

By using The Ecological Footprint planning tool, Burns will outline approaches for measuring and reducing human impact on the natural environment. With this tool, she determines whether or not our lifestyles' footprints fit within the ecological capacity of our nations, states and regions. By means of her "satisfaction barometer," she also discusses whether these lifestyles provide a high quality of life.

"Equipped with these two tools, we can find ways for everybody to secure their quality of life within the means of nature," said Shalini Suryanarayana, director of special academic programs and a member of the Environmental Sustainability Committee at Michigan Tech. The committee is among several organizations at MTU and Finlandia University hosting Burns' visit to the area.

Burns will visit the Environmental Studies Class at Finlandia University in Hancock from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24, in the Art and Design Studio in Nikander Hall. The class is taught by Suzanne VanDam, director of Finlandia's new ACE program (Arts, Culture and the Environment).

VanDam said she became interested in the Ecological Footprint when, several years ago, she met Mathis Wackernagel, pioneer of the concept and author of Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing human impact on Earth, New Society Publishers, 1996.

"I thought that his concept of the Ecological Footprint was an exciting step for the environmental movement because it provides hope in a time when there's so much discouraging news about the environment," VanDam said. 

Burns will discuss the impact of human populations on earth and show how communities, individuals and regions can monitor that impact and compare it to the biosphere's capacity to regenerate itself. She will also explain how sustainability concepts have influenced business thinking, political policy and scientific studies.

Burns, who is also principal of Natural Strategies LLC, has consulted for 18 years with more than 50 corporations and other organizations on a variety of sustainability issues, including product design, consensus building, management systems, business strategy, forest policy and stakeholder communications. She is an expert in The 
Natural Step Framework for Sustainability (TNS) and coauthored the TNS curriculum used by colleges and universities throughout the U.S.

"Come and see how the Footprint is being used to make sustainability specific, tangible and local," Suryanarayana said. "Learn a few tricks about how you can apply this tool in your own life."

Burns' visit is sponsored by Michigan Tech's Environmental Sustainability Committee, the Graduate Student Council, the Vice President of Research, the Sustainable Futures Institute, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, the Department of Social Sciences and the Society for Environmental Engineers; and by Finlandia University and the Finlandia University Campus Enrichment Committee.

Suryanarayana added, "We have worked hard to develop Susan's itinerary so that she will be interacting with a wide array of audiences -- students at MTU and Finlandia, faculty, staff, administrators, community members -- and in many different ways (brown bag lunch, classroom visit, public presentation, seminars, small group meetings, more...). One thing we are concerned about is making sure that community members feel welcomed. For those who might not know where M&M U115 is located (public presentation), we put a campus map on our web site and linked it to that part of her schedule."

Visit the ESC Web site for Burns' itinerary.

For more information about Burn's visit and about sustainability, see http://www.esc.mtu.edu or call Suryanarayana at 487-2262. To calculate your ecological footprint, see http://myfootprint.org.

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