Ecological footprint

• Refers to biologically productive areas necessary to support the current consumption pattern.
• It shows how much productive land and water a given population requires to produce all the resources it consumes and take in all the waste it creates.
• Also, it is one of the few measures that aggregate a variety of human impacts in consistency with thermodynamic laws and ecological principles.
• The ecological footprint of any defined population is the biologically productive area required to:

a) Produce the food, wood, energy, and all the other resources that humans consume.

b) To provide room for infrastructure such as buildings and roads, and

c) To absorb the wastes, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants that result from human activity.