Ecological Footprint

Ecological Footprint

Subject – Environment

Context – Environmental disaster has struck Kerala once again.

Concept –

• The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy.
• It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system.
• In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment.
• Both the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity are expressed in global hectares—globally comparable, standardized hectares with world average productivity.
• Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature.
  • On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint adds up all the productive areas for which a population, a person or a product competes. It measures the ecological assets that a given population or product requires to produce the natural resources it consumes (including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions.
    • The Ecological Footprint tracks the use of productive surface areas. Typically these areas are: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, forest area, and carbon demand on land.
  • On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s biocapacity represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land). These areas, especially if left unharvested, can also serve to absorb the waste we generate, especially our carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel.
• If a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s biocapacity, that region runs a biocapacity deficit.
  • Its demand for the goods and services that its land and seas can provide—fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton for clothing, and carbon dioxide absorption—exceeds what the region’s ecosystems can regenerate.
  • In more popular communications, we also call this “an ecological deficit.”
  • A region in ecological deficit meets demand by importing, liquidating its own ecological assets (such as overfishing), and/or emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
• If a region’s biocapacity exceeds its Ecological Footprint, it has a biocapacity reserve.

What is Earth Overshoot Day?

• When the entire planet is running an ecological deficit, we call it “overshoot.” At the global level, ecological deficit and overshoot are the same, since there is no net import of resources to the planet.
• Overshoot occurs when:

HUMANITY’S ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT > EARTH’S BIOCAPACITY

• Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services (Ecological Footprint) in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year (biocapacity).
• According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), humanity has again used up all biological resources that our planet regenerates during the entire year by 29th July, 2021.
• Humanity currently uses 74% more than what the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate — or 1.7 Earths.
• From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, humanity operates on ecological deficit spending.

Global Footprint Network

• Global Footprint Network, founded in 2003, is an independent think tank originally based in the United States, Belgium and Switzerland. It was established as a charitable not-for-profit organization in each of those three countries.
• Global Footprint Network develops and promotes tools for advancing sustainability, including the ecological footprint and biocapacity, which measure the amount of resources we use and how much we have. These tools aim at bringing ecological limits to the center of decision-making.
• The Network brings together over 70 partner organizations,including WWF International, ICLEI, Bank Sarasin, The Pictet Group, the New Economics Foundation, Pronatura México, and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi.