Ecological foot print

• Refers to biologically productive area 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 wastes it creates.
• Also, it is one of the few measures that aggregate a variety of human impact in consistence with thermodynamic laws and ecological principles.
• The ecological foot print of any defined population is the biologically productive area required to:

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