Definition of Ecological Footprint

Posts Tagged ‘natural resources’

Before you try to calculate the Ecological Footprint of a country, a city or an entire economy, you might want to understand how to calculate the Ecological Footprint of a person first. The mathematical system of calculating and estimating the Ecological Footprint of a person is the same as calculating the Ecological Footprint of a country except that for a country, there are a large number or more complicated factors that you will have to incorporate into your calculation and Ecological Footprint Analysis. So, to start off with, make sure you understand and know how to calculate the Ecological Footprint of an average person in an economy or country. After all a country or economy is made up of a large number of average persons. 

Before any Ecological Footprint calculations, you need to gather a list of all the consumption items and natural resources used by an average person because you will need to do an ecological calculation on each of them one by one. Use the equations in the Calculating Ecological Footprint to calculate the average annual consumption of each item and then the land needed to produce that item.

After you have calculated all the (and there should be many) different land requirements to produce each item that an average person uses or consumes then you can calculate the total Ecological Footprint of an average person per capital by adding up all the land needed. 

 

Once you have calculated the total Ecological Footprint of an average person within a country or economy, you can proceed to calculate the Ecological Footprint of that country, economy or city relatively easily.

The technical or scientific Definition of Ecological Footprint can be difficult to understand so below is a more simple explanation of what Ecological Footprint is.

Explain the concept of Ecological Footprint

Let’s imagine a cow in a field as an analogy. The cow needs to eat grass to stay alive and do his job. After the cow eats, he will produce waste which will be absorbed into the field. But the cow does not need an endless amount of grass or a very large field. So the question becomes, how much field does the cow need?

In Ecological Footprinting, the cow is the economy and the field is the natural resources. Like the cow in the example above, the economy needs to consume natural resources and after it is done with them, it will spit them out as waste which are absorbed into the Earth. So, the question becomes, how much natural resources and land are needed to support the economy and sustain the same standard of living.