What is the difference between carrying capacity and ecological footprint?

Answer 1

The ecological footprint is the other side of the coin of carrying capacity.

The carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals which can be sustained by an ecological system (= ecosystem). For example, if you have a pond, and the pond is one hectare large and 1 metre deep, perhaps the carrying capacity of the pond is 1000 fishes (a purely hypothetical example). Unless the food source for these fishes is increased from the outside (e.g., dumping extra food into the pond), no more than 1000 fishes can sustainably live in this pond. If you put another 1000 fishes into the pond, they would die of hunger.

If we extrapolate this to the Earth, there must be an upper carrying capacity for human beings on this planet. Given our improving technology, this carrying capacity can be increased to some extent, but logic dictates that carrying capacity cannot be increased indefinitely (actually, nothing can increase indefinitely, which is why continuing economic growth is suicidal www.impossiblehamster.org)

So if we accept that there is some kind of threshold for the carrying capacity of the planet Earth, then we must also accept that increasing humanity's ecological footprint (defined as the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the resources and to absorb the resulting wastes that support that person's standard of living, using prevailing technology and management practices -- see www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_basics_overview) means that we are getting closer and closer (and perhaps are already beyond) the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Therefore, as humanity's ecological footprint increases, we are reaching (or perhaps even overshooting) the Earth's carrying capacity, which could very well prove to be very detrimental to human well-being (especially the poorest people at the bottom of the food chain) and the long-term sustainability of human societies as we know them right now.

In essence, today's socio-economic systems were designed during the 19th century when there were only 1 billion people (small ecological footprint) and resources seemed limitless (carrying capacity still very far away). Nowadays, we are heading towards 10 billion people within one generation and resources (especially biological resources) are being used up and destroyed forever at an unprecedented rate (large and rapidly increasing ecological footprint). When circumstances change, systems must adapt or collapse.

Therefore, we must stop economic growth (steadystate.org) and re-design our entire socio-economic systems to deal with the new 21th century realities of a planet which is "hot, flat, and crowded" (www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded). Ignoring the reality of the existing carrying capacity of the planet is inherently illogical and patently stupid.

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