ABSTRACT

The ecological footprint (EF) is the area of biologically productive land and water an individual, population, or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the wastes it generates in a sustainable way. The ultimate aim of the EF is to see whether it would be possible to extract all the resources used by people on earth from the land on a sustainable basis. The concept of EF can also be used to determine how many people the earth can support for a given style of life. The unit of measurement for the EF is the global hectare, which represents an averagely productive hectare of the biologically productive land and water a population needs to produce the renewable resources it uses and to absorb the wastes it creates. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.