What is an Ecological Footprint?
BY TASNEEM S. G.
What is an ecological footprint? Well, according to the Oxford Dictionary:
ecological footprint [ˌēkəˈläjikl ˈfo͝otprint]
NOUN ecological footprint (noun) · ecological footprints (plural noun)
- the impact of a person or community on the environment, expressed as the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources.
Pretty straightforward. However, what does leaving an ecological footprint really mean?
Basically, an ecological footprint is the supply of nature vs. the demand of nature. How much nature is there? How much nature is left on Planet Earth? This is the supply of nature: how much nature there is. However, it will eventually run out. Why? Due to the increasing demand of natural supplies: wood, metal, etc. Look around you. How many things can you count that are made of a natural material?
A lot, yes.
Now, let us focus on wood. What things are made from wood? Let's make a list, shall we?
- Tables
- Chairs
- Cupboards
- Paper (this is the BIG ONE, people)
- Cardboard (this is the OTHER BIG ONE)
- Utensils
- Knitting needles
- Etc.
These are the obvious ones. However, many other things that you would not expect to be made of wood are also made of wood (or, rather, have wood in them)! Here are just four of them:
- Latex rubber gloves
- Sponges
- Corks
- Chewing gum
Can you believe it? Even chewing gum has wood in it. Weird, huh?
Well, back to the ecological footprint. Sustainability is an ecosystem's ability to continue or sustain itself. One way of measuring the sustainability of the environment is with the ecological footprint. One example of sustainability is how much pollution the environment can take.
So, can an ecosystem be considered unsustainable? You bet. If a place's ecological footprint is more than its biocapacity, it is not sustainable. In other words, if an area's demand of nature is more than what it has, or its supply, it is not self-sustaining.
GHA is the unit used for the ecological footprint. GHA stands for global hectares. GHA is how they measure how much biologically productive land there is with a productivity that is the same as the world average. By far, the U.S.A. has the most GHA per person: 8.4 (Lim. "What Is Ecological Footprint? Definition and How to Calculate It").
How do you calculate an ecological footprint? EF = ΣTi/Yw x EQFi,. Yep, I had to drag math into this. Here, "Ti is the annual amount of tons of each product i that are consumed in the nation, Yw is the yearly world-average yield for producing each product i, and EQFi is the equivalence factor for each product i" (Lim. "What Is Ecological Footprint? Definition and How to Calculate It"). You never wanted to know this, did you?
Be sure to check out our next article, What is a Carbon Footprint?.
Works Cited - References
Lim, Alane. "What Is Ecological Footprint? Definition and How to Calculate It." Treehugger, 6 Oct. 2020, www.treehugger.com/what-is-ecological-footprint-4580244. Accessed 24 Dec. 2020.
"Ecological Footprint." The Sustainable Scale Project, Santa-Barbara Family Foundation, www.sustainablescale.org/conceptualframework/understandingscale/measuringscale/ecologicalfootprint.aspx.
Galli, A., et al. "An Exploration of the Mathematics behind the Ecological Footprint." International Journal of Ecodynamics, vol. 2, no. 4, 2007, pp. 250-257.
"Handout: Ecological Footprints From Around the World: Where Do You Fit In?" Sierra Club BC, Sierra Club, 2006.
"Open Data Platform." Footprintnetwork.org, Global Footprint Network, data.footprintnetwork.org/#/.
Srinivas, Hari. "What Is an Ecological Footprint?" Urban and Ecological Footprints, The Global Development Research Center, www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/what-is-ef.html.