Ecological+Footprint

ACTIVITY – What is an ecological footprint?

The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a measure of how much productive land and sea is needed to provide the resources, such as energy, water and raw materials, we use in our everyday lives. It also calculates the emissions generated from the oil, coal and gas we burn, and it determines how much land is required to absorb our waste. Since we use resources from all over the world, our footprint is the sum of these areas, wherever they are on the planet. It is measured in global hectares per person (gha/capita). An ecological footprint can be calculated for an individual, a group or even a product. (Reference www.wwf-uk.org.uk)

In the world the average ecological footprint is 2.2 hectares per person, while in the UK the average ecological footprint is 5.4 hectares per person. This means that if everyone in the world were to live like people in the UK, we would need three planets to survive.

Questions for discussion and written work


 * Why are figures for a UK citizen more than double those for the world average?


 * What does this say about our lifestyle, our consumption of resources and our attitude to waste?


 * What problems do you think this might cause in the future?

What makes up the ecological footprint of people in the UK?



Type this data into an Excel spreadsheet and represent the information in a pie chart.

Questions for discussion and written work

Which aspect of our daily lives has the biggest impact on our ecological footprint?

Now using the following resource calculate your own footprint www.bestfootforward.com/footprintlife.htm <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">@http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">In which areas of your life do you think you could make a contribution to reducing your own ecological footprint?

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[|Indonesia's Ecological footprint]

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Indonesia as you have seen is an ecological creditor country. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Residents of ecological creditor countries use less ecological resources than are available within their national borders, and therefore are endowed with a reserve of natural assets. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Why do you think this is so? <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Why may this change in the future?

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Also you should remember that when measuring the ecological footprint the following are not taken into account:
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">Loss of natural habitat. ( in fact if you chop down a rainforest and plant palm oil plants then you increase biocapacity. In reality this is a loss to mankind)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">Loss of biodiversity (Indonesia is particularly suffering from this)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">pollution
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Depletion of non renewable resources and renewable resources are treated the same but they are not
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Consumption of a country's natural resources by other countries (again MNCs in Indonesia maybe exploiting resources)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Climate change