Ecological Footprint, a sustainable development measurment index

Ecological footprint is the measurement of the Earth's natural resources that someone or something consume. Ecological footprint (sometimes called Ecological footprint analysis or EF analysis for short) is measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems and natural resources. The ecological footprint is, at present one of the most widely used indicators of the environmental capital utilization. The EF is a synthetic indicator of environmental sustainability which assess the total quantity of natural services that a given population uses by calculating the total area of land and water ecosystems necessary to provide, in a sustainable way, all the resources, and to reabsorb all the outputs produced. EF the metric that allows us to calculate human pressure on the planet and come up with facts, such as: If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American we would need five planets.

Ecological Footprint, a sustainable development measurment index Keywords:

Carrying capacity , Sustainable development , Population , Consumption , Overshoot , Human welfare