A review of ecological footprint as an environmental economical concept to preserve the natural capital

Natural environment plays a very crucial role in economical activities, this role is contained by two components : one of them is directly through providing resources and raw materials like timber, mineral substances which are necessary as input for producing goods and services and the other one which is indirectly through give us those of services which has been produced by ecosystems , beneficial like carbon sequestration , water treatment and purification , natural risk control and management of pearls by flood and so on, therefore ecological footprint is a kind of indicator which can be suitably applied toward measuring the human needs to earth biological resources. This concept has promoted initially as a simple and outstanding method for comparing among societies in case of sustainable consumption . this article is a review study which its data has achieved by library studies and studying related literatures and the aim of that is describing the concept of ecological footprint by exert of scientists opinions at this field. At the end I conclude and recommend that if we are looking for a dynamic economy , considering such a concepts like ecological footprint in our policy making stage as well as implement it in practice is a necessity, and definitely we can only get it by embedding environmental education at the level of policy makers.

Keywords:

ecological footprint , natural environment , ecological economy , dynamic economy , environment