Ecological Footprints Chapter 32

Introduction Throughout this course we have looked at how people use the Earth and what impact this use might have on it. Example: agriculture, mining, forestry, etc. The purpose of this last chapter is to introduce you to a way of measuring the demand we place on the environment – the ecological footprint

Ecological Footprint Is the amount of space required to support a person’s activities. This concept converts all human activities to equivalent land areas In order to live, we consume what nature offers. Every action impacts the planet's ecosystems. This is of little concern as long as human use of resources does not exceed what the Earth can renew. But are we taking more?

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed." - Mahatma Gandhi

Add up the land it takes to grow your food,collect your water, produce the materials for the building you live in, the clothing you wear and all the other things you use or consume... add it all up, and that's your ecological footprint.

How do you measure your EF? You measure your ecological footprint in land. It's expressed in acres or better yet in hectares. One hectare is 100 x 100 square meters. An acre is about 4047 square meters, so a hectare measures about two-and-a-half acres.

Is this concept important? The size of your footprint is important. The human population is 6 billion and growing, and there is only so much land in the world.

So how much land do we use? Today, humanity's Ecological Footprint is over 23% larger than what the planet can regenerate. In other words, it now takes more than one year and two months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year. We maintain this overshoot by liquidating the planet's ecological resources. This is a vastly underestimated threat and one that is not adequately addressed.

Sustainability Sustainability is a simple idea. It is based on the recognition that when resources are consumed faster than they are produced or renewed, the resource is depleted and eventually used up. In a sustainable world, society's demand on nature is in balance with nature's capacity to meet that demand.