Ecological Footprint
“The Ecological Footprint refers to “the amount of the environment necessary to produce the goods and services necessary to support a particular lifestyle.”
What You Need to Know About the Ecological Footprint
Defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Ecological Footprint is “the amount of the environment necessary to produce the goods and services necessary to support a particular lifestyle.” We can imagine there’s a balancing scale—human activities sit on one side and nature sits on the other side. Human activities consume resources and produce waste; nature, on the other hand, needs to have the capacity to meet the demand from human activities. The measurement of our demands on nature through this balancing scale is the Ecological Footprint.
Two inseparable concepts when discussing the Ecological Footprint are the Earth Overshoot Day and Biocapacity. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when demand for Earth's ecological resources (an Ecological Footprint) exceeds what the planet can regenerate (a Biocapacity). Every year the Global Footprint Network calculates Earth Overshoot Day, and in 2021 that day was July 29. This was the day we reached the capacity of our ecological resources for the year. Overshoot occurs when the humanity’s ecological footprint exceeds the earth’s biocapacity
Biocapacity is the amount of biologically productive area that can provide humans with resources and absorb the waste we generate. Examples of these areas include forest lands, fishing grounds, and grazing grounds. We can compare our Biocapacity to our Ecological footprint to see if we, both as an individual or as a society, are balanced or not. The United States has one of the highest Ecological Footprints in the world. This is because the U.S. has more suburban sprawl and less public transportation than most countries. This means more fossil fuels burned, which adds more to the United States’ per-capita Ecological Footprint.
We now have a basic conceptual idea of how the Ecological Footprint works. The next question is, how do we calculate it? The Ecological Footprint of a person is calculated by adding up all of the person's demands that compete for biologically productive space. Our demands range from plant-based food and fiber products to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.
What is your Ecological Footprint? You can calculate it through this website.
References:
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). (n.d.). Ecological footprint. Retrieved April 14, 2022, fromhttps://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/teacher_resources/webfieldtrips/ecological_balance/eco_footprint/
Global Footprint Network. (n.d.). Earth overshoot day. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/earth-overshoot-day/
Global Footprint Network. (n.d.). Glossary - global footprint network. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/glossary/
World Population Review. (n.d.). Ecological footprint by country 2022. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/ecological-footprint-by-country
