What is an ecological footprint?

Question

Samuel Albin · Accepted Answer

An ecological footprint is the amount of biologically productive area required to sustain a person, family, city, etc.

An ecological footprint is the amount of biologically productive area required to sustain a person, family, city, etc. You can calculate and discuss the ecological footprint for an individual or for a nation. It is a concept that can be scaled as needed.

Included in an ecological footprint is everything a given entity, for the sake of clarity let's use individual, needed to produce all of the natural resources that individual consumes. This means the water the person drinks, the land the person lives on, the building materials used for the house or dwelling the person lives in, the food the purpose consumes. An ecological footprint is measured in the amount of biologically productive land needed to sustain that lifestyle.

An ecological footprint is one measure of sustainability. Measures for cities take into account the average per city inhabitant and any resources the city as a whole consumes and provides.

The image below shows the ecological footprints of Barcelona and Cairo in Spain and Egypt respectfully. Note: biocapacity is defined as the productivity of an area.

You can calculate your individual footprint here .
You can see the footprints of different countries here.
You can find more information about this topic from the World Wildlife Foundation here.

Ezekiel Allen · Answer

undefined An ecological footprint measures the amount of land and resources required to sustainably support a human population or an individual's lifestyle. It takes into account factors such as food consumption, energy use, transportation, and waste production, and quantifies their impact on the environment in terms of land area needed for resource production and waste absorption.