What is Ecological Footprint? Application of Ecological Footprint

The concept was put forward by William Rees (1992), formerly termed appropriated carrying capacity. 
What is Ecological Footprint definition


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.
Ecological footprint: Do we fit our planet? from Alexandre Magnin on Vimeo.

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.  
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