What isEcological footprint?

Answer 1

An ecological footprint measures how much of the planet's resources you use, and converts this to the amount of land needed to provide the resources and assimilate your waste. It is measured in global hectares (a hectare is about the size of a soccer field). It includes:

* The amount of building materials you use in your home and workplace * The amount of water you use in your home, workplace and garden

* The fossil fuels (oil, coal, wood and natural gas) needed

* to provide the power to run your home and workplace

* to bring your food from all over the world

* to power your vehicles and transport * to carry away and dispose of your waste.

A recent study (October 2008) ranks the top ten countries with the highest ecological footprint per head as:

# United Arab Emirates # United States # Kuwait # Denmark # Australia # New Zealand # Canada # Norway # Estonia # Ireland.
It is what you leave behind such as a foot print at the park. Only in this place the foot print is the resources you use up during a life time.

Answer 2

The Ecological Footprint is a tool devised to calculate the anthropogenic demand on the environment. It meaures the amount of land and water area humanity uses to produce the resources we consume and to absorb the waste we produce.

It can also be calculated at the individual or business level, but the global footprint is the combined resource demand of all humans.

Answer 3

Ecological Footprint accounts answer a specific research question: how much of the biological capacity of the planet is demanded by a given human activity or population? To answer this question, the Ecological Footprint measures the amount of biologically productive land and water area an individual, a city, a country, a region, or all of humanity uses to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates with today's technology and resource management practices. This demand on the biosphere can be compared to biocapacity, a measure of the amount of biologically productive land and water available for human use. Biologically productive land includes areas such as cropland, forest, and fishing grounds, and excludes deserts, glaciers, and the open ocean.

Global hectares are hectares with world-average productivity for all productive land and water areas in a given year. Studies that are compliant with current Ecological Footprint Standards use global hectares as a measurement unit. This makes Ecological Footprint results globally comparable, just as financial assessments use one currency, such as dollars or Euros, to compare transactions and financial flows throughout the world.

Answer 4

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand of the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital (resources from nature) that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate.