Ecological deficit and use of natural capital in Luxembourg from 1995 to 2009

Scarcity of natural resources and productive land is a global issue affecting the provision of goods and services at the country scale. This is particularly true for small regions with highly developed economies such as Luxembourg, which usually balance the chronic unavailability of resources (in particular with regard to fossil fuels) with an increasing demand of imported raw materials, energy and manufactured commodities. Based on historical time-series analysis (from 1995 to 2009), this paper determines the state of natural capital (NC) utilization in Luxembourg and estimates its ecological deficit (ED). Accordingly, solar energy demand (SED) and ecological footprint (EF) for Luxembourg have been initially calculated based on a recently developed country-specific environmentally extended input–output model. Thereafter, these indicators have been compared to the corresponding annual trends of potential NC (estimated using the emergy concept) and biocapacity, respectively. Results show that the trends in ED and in the use of NC in Luxembourg have not increased substantially during the years surveyed. However, the estimates also highlight that the NC of Luxembourg is directly and indirectly overused by a factor higher than 20, while circa 9 additional ‘Luxembourg states' would be ideally necessary to satisfy the current land's requirements of the country and thus balance the impact induced by the EF. An in-depth analysis of the methodological advantages and limitations behind our modelling approach has been performed to validate our findings and propose a road map to improve the environmental accounting for NC and biocapacity in Luxembourg.