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At a global scale, footprint assessments show how big humanity's demand is compared to what Earth can renew. Global Footprint Network estimates that, as of 2022, humanity has been using natural capital 71% faster than Earth can renew it, which they describe as meaning humanity's ecological footprint corresponds to 1.71 planet Earths.
Biocapacity is used together with ecological footprint as a method of measuring human impact on the environment. Biocapacity and ecological footprint are tools created by the Global Footprint Network, used in sustainability studies around the world. Biocapacity is expressed in terms of global hectares per person, thus is dependent on human ...
Every year, Global Footprint Network produced a new edition [3] of its National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, which calculate Ecological Footprint and biocapacity of more than 200 countries and territories from 1961 to the present. Based on up to 15,000 data points per country per year, these data have been used to influence policy in ...
The global hectare (gha) is a measurement unit for the ecological footprint of people or activities and the biocapacity of the Earth or its regions. One global hectare is the world's annual amount of biological production for human use and human waste assimilation, per hectare of biologically productive land and fisheries.
The ecological footprint and its close analog the water footprint has become a popular way of accounting for the level of impact that human society is imparting on the Earth's ecosystems. [78] [79] All indications are that the human enterprise is unsustainable as the footprint of society is placing too much stress on the ecology of the planet. [80]
Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demands people make on nature and compares them to available supplies, for both individual countries and the world as a whole. [64] Developed originally by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, it has been refined and applied in a variety of contexts over the years by Global Footprint Network (GFN).
With a world-average biocapacity of 1.63 global hectares (gha) per person (12.2 billion in total), this leads to a global ecological deficit of 1.1 global hectares per person (10.4 billion in total). [1] For humanity, having a footprint smaller than the planet's biocapacity is a necessary condition for sustainability.
Ecological footprint accounting, based on the biological concept of carrying capacity, tracks the amount of land and water area a human population demands for producing the biological resources the population consumes, for absorbing its waste, and for accommodating its built infrastructure, all under prevailing technology.