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 absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste.

Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. For 2005, humanity's total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.3 planet Earths - in other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.3 times as fast as Earth can renew them. Every year, this number is recalculated - with a three year lag due to the time it takes for the UN to collect and publish all the underlying statistics.

While the term ecological footprint is widely used, methods of measurement vary. However, calculation standards are now emerging to make results more comparable and consistent. The ecological footprint concept and calculation method was developed as the PhD dissertation of Mathis Wackernagel, under Prof.

William E. Rees at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, from 1990-1994. The first academic publication about the ecological footprint was by William Rees in 1992.

Originally, Wackernagel and Rees called the concept "appropriated carrying capacity". To make the idea more accessible, Rees came up with the term "ecological footprint," inspired by a computer technician who praised his new computer's "small footprint on the desk." In early 1996, Wackernagel and Rees published the book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.

Similar to 0 things you like: