An ecological footprint is a measurement on how much impact you have on the planet. An accouting system to find out how much land area is needed to provide for you lifestyle, and as a comparison on how many earths would be needed if the whole population lived like you. It gives you a chance to compare how much area is needed for your lifestyle and how much area that is available (biocapacity)
It can be applied not only on you as a person, but also on companies, cities or countries. That means on a global scale we can use it to show how big the human demand is compared to the earth's capacity. The measurement is commonly used around the world as an indicator on sustainability.
The idea of the ecological footrpint first came from William Rees in 1992 and since then it has been refined and improved with standards to ensure that calculations are comparable to each other. It is a means to compare different lifestyles to each other. However it is not perfect and has been criticized throughout the years. One of the largest criticisms is that calculating the footprint of an area or city with a large density in it's population give these areas very "bad" results. Since these areas have very little biocapacity to maintain its large population their scores are bad. Another critique is that the footprint calcualtion does not differ on what type of forest there is, if it's an old tropical forest or a plantation. Therefore the measurement should not be seen as a complete but be combined with other types of demasn, such as biodiversity.
For me however I see that making a calculation of my ecological footprint could be a good measurement to use to see if the changes I make really make a difference. I will therefore calculate my footprint, and of course show it to you on the blog, and comment on the result.
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