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Achieving a just and sustainable food system
Published in Stephen R. Gliessman, V. Ernesto Méndez, Victor M. Izzo, Eric W. Engles, Andrew Gerlicz, Agroecology, 2023
Stephen R. Gliessman, V. Ernesto Méndez, Victor M. Izzo, Eric W. Engles, Andrew Gerlicz
The concept of the ecological footprint, developed in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia, allows us to roughly quantify ecological impact in relation to carrying capacity and conceptualize the deficit that occurs when the former exceeds the latter. The ecological footprint concept has become a widely recognized means of measuring and comparing the ecological demands that an individual, city, region, or country—or all of humanity—place on ecosystems or the whole biosphere. Calculating an ecological footprint entails making estimates of the resource use, energy use, waste, and pollution that goes along with everything human beings do in the course of living in a particular place. These impacts are in turn compared with that place’s biocapacity—the ability of the natural systems of the place to absorb the impacts and provide the resources demanded of them, which is essentially what is conceptualized by the term carrying capacity. Ecological impacts are sustainable when they do not exceed biocapacity.
Ecosystem services
Published in Jonathan Lautze, Zebediah Phiri, Vladimir Smakhtin, Davison Saruchera, The Zambezi River Basin, 2017
Matthew McCartney, Imasiku A. Nyambe
To determine if demand exceeds supply the footprint can be compared with the ‘biocapacity’ of a specific region. The biocapacity of a region is a measure of the ability of ecosystems in that region to regenerate biological materials used, and to absorb wastes generated, by people. Both biocapacity and ecological footprint are expressed in a common unit called a global hectare (gha): a biologically productive hectare with world average biological productivity.4 If in a given region the ecological footprint exceeds the biocapacity, this means that the biological resources of that area are being used at a rate that exceeds their ability to recover in a single year; effectively natural resources are being exploited at an unsustainable rate.
Ecological footprinting and other standards
Published in David Thorpe, ‘One Planet’ Cities, 2019
The biocapacity supply is a measure of the pollution land can absorb and the services and resources it can provide to the population under investigation. The demand is a factor of this given population level and its consumption level, which is determined by its use of cropland, forests, grazing land and fishing grounds for providing resources and absorbing carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. The result can be an average of hectares per person (or nation), as if it were distributed equally between everyone (in the world or a given country) and as if all land were equal in what it could provide. A hectare is 2.47 acres or 10,000 square metres (m2) or 0.01 km2.
Association between ecological footprint awareness and health literacy in adults: a population-based study from Turkey
Published in International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 2022
Özge Mengi Çelik, Eda Köksal, Şerife Akpinar, Betül Kocaadam Bozkurt, Nazlıcan Erdoğan Gövez, Merve Esra Çıtar Dazıroğlu, Merve Şeyda Karaçil Ermumcu, Nilüfer Acar Tek
Ensuring sustainable development in order to meet the increasing demands on the ecosystem has become a critical issue worldwide (Bastianoni et al. 2020). In the last half century, natural resources have become more limited and the danger to the world has increased (Mancini et al. 2016). Today, 1.7 planets are required to meet humanity’s demands for the earth’s natural resources (Lin et al. 2018). This brings the concept of sustainability to the fore by revealing the need for urgent measures. Ecological footprint, which stands out as a concept related to sustainability, is an indicator that measures ecological sustainability in certain categories, and it is a calculation made by comparing human needs with the availability of natural resources and collecting the necessary areas for providing renewable resources, infrastructure and waste disposal. Ecological footprint should be less than total biocapacity; however, since 2007 the ecological footprint has exceeded the available biocapacity by approximately 50% (WWF 2010, 2012). Therefore, measures are needed to reduce the ecological footprint and protect existing facilities. Increasing consumer awareness is critical in reducing the ecological footprint (Gurbuz et al. 2021). At this point, it is thought that improvement of health literacy may be effective.
Reducing the ecological footprint of urban cars
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 2018
Bonnie McBain, Manfred Lenzen, Glenn Albrecht, Mathis Wackernagel
The modeling of the global urban car transport sector that we describe here is set in the context of a larger global Ecological Footprint model that is outlined in more detail in McBain et al. (2017) and Lenzen et al. (2013). The key groups of variables that inform the Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity in the larger model are land use (built, cropping, grazing, plantation, and forest), agricultural productivity (in response to land degradation, technological change, and climate change), and climate change (the net emissions produced from the stationary energy sector, the transport sector, agricultural emissions, land clearing, and forest sequestration).
Can utilising renewable and nuclear energy harness the environmental sustainability agenda of the G7 countries? The importance of undergoing clean energy transition
Published in International Journal of Ambient Energy, 2023
Muntasir Murshed, Aarif Mohammad Khan, Uzma Khan, Mohammad Shahfaraz Khan, Rawnaq Ara Parvin
The EFP figure of a nation provides information regarding the volume of biologically productive land which is needed to meet the ecological demand of the population and to absorb the wastes generated during the consumption of the ecological resources (Li, Murshed, and Yan 2023). In this regard, the biologically productive land requirement is estimated by calculating the volume of land required for food and fibre production, extraction of timber through deforestation, absorption of fossil fuel use-related greenhouse gas emissions, and accommodation of built infrastructure. This explains how EFP, as opposed to CO2 emissions, provides a holistic view of environmental degradation by accounting for different aspects of environmental deterioration. Once the national biologically productive land requirement is estimated, the figure is transformed using a conversion factor for a homogeneous comparison of the EFP figures across the different economies worldwide. Besides, the EFP figure of a nation is contrasted with the corresponding biocapacity of the nation to assess whether the nation is ecologically surplus or deficit. While the EFP measures the biologically productive land required for meeting the demand for ecological resources and absorption of wastes, the biocapacity provides a measure of the biologically productive land that is available. In the context of the EFP of a nation exceeding its biocapacity, the nation can be classified as ecologically deficit. Conversely, if biocapacity is greater than the corresponding EFP level then the nation can be referred to as ecologically surplus. Therefore, from the point of view of ensuring environmental well-being, it is desirable to either maximise the level of ecological surplus or minimise the extent of the ecological deficit.