| Ecological Footprint |
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Footprinting is now widely used around the globe as an indicator of environmental sustainability. It can be used to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy. It is commonly used to explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organisations, industry sectors, regions and nations. ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT ANALYSIS Ecological footprint analysis approximates the amount of ecologically productive land and sea area it takes to sustain a population, manufacture a product, or undertake certain acitivities, by accounting the use of Energy , Food , Water , Building Material and other Consumable s. It is a way of determining relative Consumption for the purpose of educating people about their resource use and, sometimes, triggering them to change how they consume. It can be combined with Overpopulation concerns and stated as "the number of Earth s it would take to support every human living exactly the way you do." Ecological footprints have been used to argue that current lifestyles are not Sustainable . A number of NGO websites allow you to estimate your ecological footprint (''see'' Footprint Calculator , below). CHANGING CONSUMPTION PATTERNS One of the less-publicized but most powerful insights of ecological footprint methods is that, contrary to many people's assumptions, it is human use of Renewable Resources , not of non-renewable ones, that poses the real sustainability crisis. Nature can restore renewable resources at a certain rate. Humans consistently and increasingly consume renewables faster than Ecosystems can restore them. This state of excessive ecological burden eventually threatens those very ecosystems by not allowing them sufficient time to "recharge." Furthermore, humans can clearly live without nonrenewable resources such as Metals or Fossil Fuels , as we have done in the not-so-distant past. It is the renewable resource base on which we and all species depend. The ecological footprint approach can introduce the concept of resource recharge and the rate at which we use resources as key elements in more sustainable Human Societies . This time element helps us understand that it's not just what we use, or even how much, but how fast, and over what period of time. This meshes with other movements to "slow down" human consumption and help people disengage from that acceleration of actions and expectations that has been a crucial feature of Industrial societies. CRITICISMS Calculated footprints can be inaccurate due to simplifying assumptions. Many factors of the calculations are based on crude estimates and the numbers may not be applicable to all places (the method is biased to Northern Hemisphere lifestyles). Also, the model generally does not count multiple uses of land: a forest is a Carbon Sink and the same area is not counted for food production. The , with high ecological costs in the future. To counter these uncertainties, the models of ecological footprinting are constantly being refined. REFERENCES
SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS General
Calculators
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