Ecological Footprint

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach In “Another day, overshot to hell” Anthony Watts commented on the “Overshoot Day” promoted by Mathis Wackernagel and the Global Footprint Network (GFN). This is based on the idea of the “ecological footprint”. Your “ecological footprint” (EF) is how many acres (hectares)…

An Ecological Footprint (or Eco-footprint) measures the amount we demand from the planet/biosphere, versus the availability of resources and the ability of the planet/biosphere to assimilate the waste generated from our actions. All impacts of consumption are converted into the hectares of land (forest…

Human activities consume resources and produce waste, and as our populations grow and global consumption increases, it is essential that we measure nature’s capacity to meet these demands. The Ecological Footprint has emerged as one of the world’s leading measures of human demand on nature. Simply put…

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth s ecosystems. It compares human demand with planet Earth s ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to…

Today, more than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries that use more resources than what is renewably available within their own borders. These countries rely for their needs on resource surpluses concentrated in ecological creditor countries, which use less biocapacity than they have…

This paper compares the Ecological Footprint of two typical Tuscan wines, one conventional and one organic, to determine which type of wine production, under which circumstances, places a greater demand for ecosystem goods and services. All inputs of the agricultural, winery and packing phases were converted…

The ecological footprint of a country is defined as the area of land (and water) required by a population, given prevailing technology, to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb any wastes created. Ecological footprints are measured in ‘global hectares’ (gha). A global hectare encompasses the…

The environment is very near and dear to my heart. It is easy to find the beauty in nature. However, the more wasteful a society is, the more this beauty disappears. I am currently taking a conservation class and it got me thinking about wasting energy and resources. How can I reduce my ecological footprint?…