The concept was put forward by William Rees (1992), formerly termed appropriated carrying capacity.
Ecological footprint: Do we fit our planet? from Alexandre Magnin on Vimeo.
It represents the
biologically productive area of land and sea, necessary to supply the resources
a human population consumes, and also to dispose the associated waste.
•It is a measure of
how much biologically productive land and
water an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes, and to absorb the waste it regenerates.
•Ecological footprint
is a resource accounting system for the biological capacity of earth
•It may very well
reveal how much biocapacity does the planet earth possess and how much of it
mankind uses.
•How
much of the earth or how many planet earths is necessary to support humanity.
•The
estimated global Ecological footprint of man kind was 1.5 planet earths. This
means that humanity uses ecological resources 1.5 times as quickly as Earth can
regenerate and new them. (2007 report)
•The ecological
footprint is usually measured in global hectares (gha)
•In 2007, the
biologically productive per capita area worldwide was approximately 1.8gha.
•Present ecological footprint (EF) has
exceeded the biocapacity of the earth by
20%. Currently , as per the latest information, Cuba is the only country whose ecological footprint (EF) is below 1.8gha
• Global Footprint Network (GFN)calculates the ecological footprint from UN and other data for the
world as a whole and for over 200 nations. They estimate that as of 2013,
humanity has been using natural capital 1.6 times as fast as nature
can renew it.
Significance of Ecological Footprint
(EF)
EF can be used
as an effective tool for a number of purposes,
namely
•To educate the people
about natures carrying capacity and the over consumption of resources by man
kind
•To prove that current
life styles are not sustainable
•To reveal that there
exist inequalities among nations in the supply and consumption of resources
•Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) can be used as an
indicator of environmental
sustainability to measure and manage the use of resources.
•Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) can be used to explore the sustainability of life styles, goods and
services, industry, economy and so on.