ABSTRACT Ecological footprint is a tool which is used to represent the amount productive land area which may be needed to regenerate the resource which are consumed by human population and it also represent the earths ecological capacity to regenerate the natural resources. Each country have its own ecological footprint and its need of the hour to manage the same. In the recent days researchers are focussing on identifying tools and technologies that may improve the environmental conditions and in turn increase overall sustainability. For India, the ecological deficit is 0.40 (bio-capacity of 0.51 against human footprint of 0.91gha/capita). Considerable empirical evidence are available which shows that, while developing nations often are the least eco-efficient in the sense that they consume a lot of resources per unit of GDP, they also consume the least amount of resources in absolute and/or per capita terms. Less affluent nations, such as China and India, need to shift their development strategies away from relentless economic expansion and focus on strategies that improve people&quot;s quality of life. In the recent times, stakeholders from around the world are concentrating more on ways to promote sustainability and decrease environmental degradation. By highlighting the inequities within and between people and nations, ecological footprint provides a useful tool that can help to raise public awareness and shape a healthier and more sustainable future. This paper elucidates the importance of ecological footprint and its importance in improving the environmental standards

Goel Sonu

Patro Binod

Raj Goel

Sonika

CiteSeerX

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES   Volume 2, No 1, 2011  
 
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association 
 
Case study                                                                                                                ISSN   0976 – 4402  
                                                                                                                      
Received on July 2011 Published on September 2011                                                                                       140                                                                                                                    
Ecological Footprint: A tool for measuring Sustainable development 
Goel Sonu
1
, Patro Binod
1
, Goel Raj Sonika
2
 
1-
 
MD, Assistant Professor, School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh 
2- MPH, School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh  
sonugoel007@yahoo.co.in  
doi:10.6088/ijes.00202010015 
ABSTRACT 
Ecological footprint is a tool which is used to represent the amount productive land area 
which may be needed to regenerate the resource which are consumed by human population 
and it also represent the earths ecological capacity to regenerate the natural resources. Each 
country have its own ecological footprint and its need of the hour to manage the same. In the 
recent days researchers are focussing on identifying tools and technologies that may improve 
the environmental conditions and in turn increase overall sustainability.  For India, the 
ecological deficit is 0.40 (bio-capacity of 0.51 against human footprint of 0.91gha/capita). 
Considerable empirical evidence are available which shows that, while developing nations 
often are the least eco-efficient in the sense that they consume a lot of resources per unit of 
GDP, they also consume the least amount of resources in absolute and/or per capita terms. 
Less affluent nations, such as China and India, need to shift their development strategies 
away from relentless economic expansion and focus on strategies that improve people‟s 
quality of life. In the recent times, stakeholders from around the world are concentrating more 
on ways to promote sustainability and decrease environmental degradation. By highlighting 
the inequities within and between people and nations, ecological footprint provides a useful 
tool that can help to raise public awareness and shape a healthier and more sustainable future. 
This paper elucidates the importance of ecological footprint and its importance in improving 
the environmental standards. 
Keywords:  Ecological Footprint, Carbon Footprint, Sustainability, Ecological Deficit   
1. Introduction 
Numbering over 6 billion population and still counting, the human race is steadily depleting 
the most precious gift of nature, upon which it depends to survive. There is no hiding to the 
fact that environmental problems like global warming, large-scale deforestation, 
desertification, loss of biodiversity, had disturbed our ecological equilibrium of our globe. 
Therefore, the tracking the environmental performance of nations is highly important. There 
has been an considerable amount of research world over examining various factors and forces 
that influences our environment
1
. Various national-level environmental indicators have been 
examined in the environmental social science literature. However, there is no consensus 
across the eminent scientists regarding the substantively important or the best indicators 
across the nations. The indicators which have been labeled as the “best” measures of human 
pressure on the environment, are total national ecological consumption, per capita ecological 
consumption, or ecological consumption per unit of GDP. All these indicators can be 
measured directly or indirectly by Ecological Footprint (EF)
2
. 
The term „Ecological Footprint‟ was conceptualized and coined by Wackernagel and Rees 
and further developed by them and others (e.g., Chambers, Simmons, and Wackernagel 2000, 
Ecological Footprint: A Tool for Measuring Sustainable Development 
 
Goel Sonu, Patro Binod, Goel Raj Sonika 
International Journal of Environmental Sciences Volume 2 No.1, 2011  
141 
Kites et al, 2009) to assess the societal demands on the regenerative capacity of the 
biosphere
3-4
. Originally, in 1992, Wackernagel and Rees termed the concept as "appropriated 
carrying capacity", which was further renamed by Rees by the term "ecological footprint” in 
1996
5-6
. In early 1996, Wackernagel and Rees published the book “Our Ecological Footprint: 
Reducing Human Impact on the Earth”, after which the term got global reorganization and 
acceptance
7
. 
The ecological footprint is a tool to measure the demand of humanity on earth's ecosystems 
and compares such demand with earth's ecological capacity to regenerate resources
7
. It also 
represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the 
resources which are consumed by human population and thus renders the corresponding 
waste harmless. Thus, the EF represents the total area required by humans for agriculture, 
timber production, fishing etc. combined with the area needed to absorb carbon dioxide 
released by burning fossil fuels. The EF is based on the principle that land is a principal 
factor on which all societies depend as it provides space for living, products and services to 
consume, and a sink for wastes. Productive land is, therefore considered as a proxy for the 
wants and demands of societies on the environment. Human demands can be easily calculated, 
which in turn can be converted into the biologically productive land areas necessary to 
provide these ecological services. The EF can thus be interpreted as a measure of the stress a 
nation or its part places on environment and ecosystem services
7
. 
The methods of measurement of ecological footprint vary across the nations. Various studies 
have been different methodology for measuring ecological footprint. The studies have used 
different formulas to calculate sea area, fossil fuels, and nuclear power etc. Moreover, the 
data sources used vary across these studies i.e. weather average global data or local data 
should be used when calculating EF of a local specific area. The methods for inclusion of 
space for biodiversity and imports/exports also differ across the studies
8-9
. However, 
calculation standards are now emerging to make results more comparable and consistent. In 
2003, Jason Venetoulis and colleagues developed Footprint 2.0, which is theoretically and 
methodologically advanced over the standard footprint approach
10
. In the approach, the entire 
surface of the earth was consensually considered in „bio-capacity estimates‟ for final 
calculations. Other modifications included allocation of space for non-human species, 
changing the basis of equivalence factors from agricultural land to net primary productivity 
(NPP), and changing the carbon component of the footprint, based on global carbon models.  
The EF is calculated, much similar to calculation of economic consumption i.e. by adding up 
the various forms of consumption in a society – food, housing, transportation, consumer 
goods, and services along-with the waste they generate, which in-turn is converted into a 
common metric after adjusting for their biological productivity. But unlike economics, which 
uses prices as its key indicator of value, the EF uses „productive land area‟ or 'global hectares' 
(gha) as its metric
11
. Footprint values can be further be categorized for carbon, food, housing, 
transportation, and goods and services. Therefore, this approach can be used to measure EF 
of any activity such as the manufacturing of a product, reading a book, enjoying a air 
conditioner, driving of a car or eating a bread loaf.  
Due to its consumption-based focus, the EF places environmental responsibility on the 
nations where resources are consumed rather than on the ones where they are extracted. The 
types of consumption are generally converted into the nine types of land area, which are 
aggregated to arrive at the total EF. The land area types are: (1) cropland, (2) grazing land, 
(3) forest (excluding fuel wood), (4) fishing ground, (5) built-up land, (6) the land area 
required to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from use of fossil fuel, (7) fuel wood, (8) hydro-
Ecological Footprint: A Tool for Measuring Sustainable Development 
 
Goel Sonu, Patro Binod, Goel Raj Sonika 
International Journal of Environmental Sciences Volume 2 No.1, 2011  
142 
power, and (9) nuclear power
12
. The component EF is proportionately weighted depending on 
level of productivity of land. For example, EF is larger for one hectare of arable land as 
compared to one hectare of non-arable land, reflecting relatively high productivity of arable 
land. Thus, nations may have footprints that are larger than their own land areas. Conversely, 
nations may also have footprint smaller than their own land areas.  
Every year, EF of a nation is recalculated with a three year lag period due to the time it takes 
for the UN to collect and publish the underlying statistics all over the world. In 2007, world-
average ecological footprint was 2.7 gha per person. Studies conducted shows that the U.S. 
footprint per capita was 9.0 gha, that of Switzerland 5.6 gha, China's 1.8 gha and India 0.91 
gha per person. According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the human footprint has 
exceeded the bio-capacity or the available supply of natural resources of the planet by 20%. 
This means that our demands for human resources has exceeded the supply by 20%.
12
 Claude 
Martin, Director-General of World Wildlife Fund International in Gland, Switzerland, opined 
that at current rates of consumption, the human “ecological footprint” will reach twice the 
earth‟s regenerative capacity by 2050, which is a matter of serious concern. With a world-
average bio-capacity of 1.8 global hectares per person, this leads to an ecological deficit of 
0.9 (2.7 minus 1.8) global hectares per person. For India, the ecological deficit is 0.40 (bio-
capacity of 0.51 against human footprint of 0.91gha/capita). If a country does not have 
enough ecological resources within its own territory, then there is a local ecological deficit 
and it is called an ecological debtor country. Otherwise, it has an ecological remainder and 
called an ecological creditor country. Very few nations lie in the later categories, some of 
them are, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, Finland, and Brazil. Two small nations 
Guyana and Gabon have a very high ecological remainder of 59.75 and 27.88 respectively. In 
the same year, humanity's total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.4 planet Earths – in 
other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.4 times as fast as earth can renew them
12
.   
Considerable empirical evidence are available which shows that, while developing nations 
often are the least eco-efficient in the sense that they consume a lot of resources per unit of 
GDP, they also consume the least amount of resources in absolute and/or per capita terms
13
.   
The EF tool can inform policy makers by examining to what extent a nation utilizes resources 
than is available within its territory. The total or absolute EF, which threatens nature‟s capital 
and services, increased quite dramatically in almost all major nations in world between 1961 
and 2003 (viz. by a factor of 3.9, 2.1, 2.9, and 2.9 in China, India, Japan, and the United 
States respectively), whereas, EF per unit of GDP has actually declined by a factor of 8.4, 
3.2, 2.2, and 1.4 in these countries respectively in the same period
13-14
. These findings 
indicate that almost all these nations have actually expanded their exploitation of the 
environment, at the cost of expanding their economies, which is a matter of serious concern. 
The per capita EF is a more rigorous index from the perspective of global inequalities and 
social justice as it removes the effects of population, thus assuming consumption to be scaled 
proportionally by population size. It allows for comparison of people‟s demands placed on 
the environment thus, highlighting the substantial disparity in levels of consumption across 
nations. Thus, while India‟s per capita EF stayed roughly constant from 1961 to 2003, the per 
capita EF of other nations have increased many folds (approximately doubled in China, 
Japan, and United States). In addition to it, there is clearly stark inequality across nations in 
terms of per capita pressure on the environment. For example, in 2003 the EF per capita in 
the United States was approximately six times that of China and 13 times that of India
14
. 
Thus, even though China and India each have very large and growing total footprints, it is 
clearly not because the typical person in each of those nations places a high demand on the 
environment relative to people in affluent nations.  
Ecological Footprint: A Tool for Measuring Sustainable Development 
 
Goel Sonu, Patro Binod, Goel Raj Sonika 
International Journal of Environmental Sciences Volume 2 No.1, 2011  
143 
Hoping to keep the footprint in check, stakeholders from around the world are focusing on 
ways to promote sustainability and decrease environmental degradation. The concept of 
ecological footprint was highlighted in United Nations (UN) World Summit on Sustainable 
Development, at Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August–4 September 2002. It was 
consensually decided that affluent nations, like the United States and Japan, which have 
exceedingly high levels of per capita consumption, need to drastically reduce their demands 
on the environment and transform their social, political, and economic systems to meet their 
people‟s needs without unsustainably depleting natural resources
15
. Less affluent nations, 
such as China and India, need to shift their development strategies away from relentless 
economic expansion and focus on strategies that improve people‟s quality of life without 
escalating material consumption. Such changes, however, do not necessitate inhibiting 
improvement of social well-being, but, in fact, helps in a healthy and sustainable 
environment. An ample evidence exists that there is a linkage between environmental 
degradation and other health related indicators like mortality and morbidity rates, women 
education and life expectancy. It is high time to shift the focus primarily from economic 
growth to better human quality of life and general well-being.  We are currently facing 
ecological crisis, which is inarguably humanity‟s greatest challenge for the twenty-first 
century. To meet this challenge it is imperative that we move away from the unrealistically 
optimistic assumption that improvements in the efficiency of economies alone are likely to 
solve environmental problems. The current high level of health and long lives have been 
"purchased" at the expense of the environment
16
.  
A key public health priority for the twenty-first century must be to reduce the human impact 
on the planet in order to ensure long and healthy lives of future generations, not just in the 
"developed" world but also in so called developing nations. By highlighting the inequities 
within and between people and nations, the ecological footprint provides a useful tool that 
can help to raise public awareness and shape a healthier and more sustainable future. We 
must ask ourselves „How long can our health be sustained if we deplete the resources and 
disrupt the ecosystems upon which our health and well-being are primarily based?‟ 
References 
1. Jorgenson A, Andrew K., Rice J (2005), Structural Dynamics of International 
Trade and Material Consumption: A Cross-National Study of the Ecological 
Footprints of Less-Developed Countries. Journal of World-Systems Research. 11: 
57-77.  
2. Wackernagel M (1994), Ecological Footprint and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: 
A Tool for Planning Toward Sustainability. (PhD thesis), Vancouver, Canada: 
School of Community and Regional Planning.  
3. Chambers N., Simmons C., Wackernagel M. (2000), Sharing Nature's interest: 
Ecological footprints as an indicator of sustainability. Earthscan. 
4. Kitzes J., Moran D., Galli A., Wada Y., Wackernagel M. (2009), Interpretation and 
application of the Ecological Footprint: A reply to Fiala (2008). Ecological 
Economics. 68, 929-930. 
5. Rees William E (1992), Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: 
what urban economics leaves out". Environment and Urbanization. 4 (2), 121–130  
Ecological Footprint: A Tool for Measuring Sustainable Development 
 
Goel Sonu, Patro Binod, Goel Raj Sonika 
International Journal of Environmental Sciences Volume 2 No.1, 2011  
144 
6. Rees W., Wackernagel M (1996), Urban ecological footprints: why cities cannot be 
sustainable - and why they are a key to sustainability. Environmental Impact 
Assessment Review. 16: 223-248. 
7. Wackernagel, Mathis, William Rees (1996), Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing 
Human Impact on the Earth.  Gabriola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers. 
8. Folke C., Kautsky N., Berg H., Jansson Å., Troell M (1998), The ecological 
footprint concept for sustainable seafood production: A review. Ecological 
Applications, 8 (1): 63-71 
9. Wackernagel M (1998), The Ecological Footprint of Santiago de Chile, Local 
Environment, 3 (1), pp 7-25. 
10. Redefining the Footprint (footprint 2.0) in Sustainable Development: Principles, 
Frameworks, and Case Studies. CRC, Routledge New Society Publishers 2000. 
11. Wackernagel Mathis, Onisto L, Bello P, Linares AC, Falfan I S L, Garcia J M, 
Suarez A L S Guerrero, Guerrero G S 1999. National Natural Capital Accounting 
with the Ecological Footprint Concept. Ecological Economics. 29,375-390.  
12. Ecological Footprint Atlas (2010), Global Footprint Network. 13 October 2010. 
availableathttp://www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/Ecological%20Footpri
nt%20 Atlas% 20 2010.pdf. Retrieved 24 February 2011 
13. Robert S, Timmons J, Peter E (1997), Carbon Intensity and Economic 
Development 1962-1991, A Brief Exploration of the Environmental Kuznets 
Curve. World Development. 25, 191-198.  
14. Global Ecological Integrity and "Sustainable Development": Cornerstones of 
Public Health. World Health Organization, European Centre for Environment and 
Health, Rome Division. available at www.colinsoskolne.com/.../WHO-
1999_Discussion_Document.pdf. Retrieved 24 February 2011. 
15. Richard York, Eugene A. Rosa, Thomas Dietz (2003), Footprints on the Earth: The 
Environmental Consequences of Modernity Richard, American Sociological 
Review. 68(2), 279-300. 
16. Happy planet index 2.0, available at http://www.happyplanetindex.org/public-
data/files/happy-planet-index-2-0.pdf, Retrieved 25
th
 September, 2011. 
 


Ecological Footprint: A tool for measuring Sustainable development

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=4CDB0518801AAA7ADE3A1117442621AC?doi=10.1.1.1050.7353&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Ecological Footprint: A tool for measuring Sustainable development

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

CiteSeerX