Ecological Footprint

Ecological FootPrint


an explanation of the impact they produced and illustrated with pictures and data from reliable sources.
The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on theEarth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productiveland and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or howmany planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody followed a given lifestyle. For 2007, humanity's total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.5 planet Earths; that is, humanity usesecological services 1.5 times as quickly as Earth can renew them. Every year, this number is recalculated to incorporate the three-year lag due to the time it takes for the UN to collect and publishstatistics and relevant research.
Although the term ecological footprint is widely used and well known,it goes beyond the metaphor. It represents an accounting system for biocapacity that tracks howmuch biocapacity there is, and how much biocapacity people use. Calculation methods have converged thanks to standards released in 2006 and updated in 2009.

Commodity is any good or service("products" of "activities") produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art andnatural resources, even although they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.

Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows throughindustrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which can be...