Ecological Footprint: Humanities killing Nature

The Ecological Footprint is a management and communications tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use and who uses what. It represents the area of biologically productive land and water, a population (or individual, city, country or all of humanity) requires to provide the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste, using prevailing technology. The ecological footprint is thus an assessment of how many planet Earths it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle.

By using the ecological footprint per capita, it is possible to compare consumption and lifestyle with Natures ability to provide for this consumption. The ecological footprint provides a tool able to inform citizens and politicians of a nation’s use of capacity available within its territory. The footprint also works as a useful tool to educate people about carrying capacity and over-consumption.

Ecological footprints may be used to argue that many current lifestyles are not sustainable. In 2003, the average person’s ecological footprint was 2.2 global hectares, while there is only 1.8 global hectares of biological productive area per person available on the planet. Such a global comparison also clearly shows the inequalities of resource used. The smallest footprint is 0.1 global hectares per capita in Afghanistan, whereas the largest are 11.9 global hectares per capita in the United Arab Emirates. The US footprint in 2003 was 9.6 global hectares per capita. This means that if we were all Americans, we would need 5 planets to support us and Americans would, on average, need a reduction of five-sixths (83%) to be sustainable.