How to calculate the ecological footprint

The importance that climate change is having in our lives, as well as the imminent need to implement sustainable living habits, have led to the creation of different systems for measuring and cataloging the impact that human activities have on the environment . One of these indicators is the so-called ecological footprint, which is perhaps the most widely used of all systems measuring the human impact on the planet today. If you want to know a little more about this system, as well as learn how to calculate the ecological footprint, read on and we'll tell you.

What is the ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is an indicator that measures the impact that human activity has on the environment . It starts from the premise that natural resources are used to satisfy human activities. However, since these natural resources are limited, their use is conditional on said natural resources having regeneration capacity. In this way, a sustainable use will be one that consumes natural resources below the rate of regeneration of those resources, while an unsustainable use will be one that consumes resources above the rate of regeneration necessary for the planet to continue offering them. .

Because the ecological footprint establishes a relationship between the available resources and the consumption of these resources by human beings per year, the number of human beings that exist will determine how much resources can be consumed per person . That is, the resources are always the same, but the number of people varies. In this way, the more people there are, the less natural resources will correspond to each individual and vice versa.

With the current population, it is estimated that a neutral ecological footprint would be located at a consumption of 1.8 hectares per person. However, it has been estimated that humanity's use of the available resources is 2.7 hectares per person . That is, we are consuming natural resources well above the planet's capacity to regenerate these resources. As a result, we are consuming resources from future generations and, in addition, we are diminishing the ability to regenerate resources. Which implies a decrease in the amount of final resources to be distributed per person.

How the calculation of the ecological footprint is made

The calculation of the ecological footprint is carried out both individually and collectively. That is, you can calculate the ecological footprint of a person or a community, location, geographic region, country, continent, etc. For this, several factors are taken as a reference. These factors are:

The hectares needed to produce vegetable food.
The hectares needed to produce pastures for livestock.
The hectares of sea necessary to produce fish.
The necessary hectares of forest so that the CO2 produced by all the related activities can be absorbed.
The urbanizable hectares necessary to satisfy the needs of the population, which will include buildings and infrastructures, as well as their impact on the production of CO2.

Now that you know how to measure your personal ecological footprint, you may also be interested in this other article on How to be greener day by day.

Is the calculation of the ecological footprint reliable?

However, this type of index presents a series of important problems, since, in many cases, it constitutes an imprecise measurement of the real impact that human beings have on the environment. In fact, there are different aspects that should be nuanced in the calculation of the ecological footprint.

One of them is due to the different uses made by the population of the same transport site or their eating habits, as well as the variations that may exist depending on the seasonality of when the impact of the ecological footprint is analyzed.

Moreover, there are many voices that consider that the current ecological footprint does not correspond to the real impact that human activity has on the environment, who calculate that the impact must be considerably higher because there are many human activities that, at the individual level, they would not be reflected in the statistics.

How to reduce the ecological footprint

However, beyond the critics who affirm the inadequacy of this methodology when it comes to obtaining a clear and reliable information on the impact that human activity has on the planet, the experts assure that it is urgent that measures be taken, both at a collective as individual to counteract the impact that human actions have on the environment.

In this sense, some of the most important individual actions that can be taken when reducing our ecological footprint would be the following:

Give priority to foods of vegetable origin compared to those of animal origin.
Dispense with a private vehicle owned.
Reduce the consumption of unnecessary products (especially in the fashion sector).
Reduce the consumption of single-use containers and plastics.
Give priority to products of local manufacturing or processing or localization.
Make responsible use of both water and electricity.
Reduce the number of children.
Avoid using the plane as much as possible, betting on a local or local tourism.

All these measures allow to drastically reduce the impact that human activities have on the environment at the individual level. Likewise, other actions, such as the implementation of clean and renewable energies in substitution of fossil fuels, or the creation of more efficient public transport infrastructures, are actions that must be carried out both by governments and by companies with the objective of to reduce the ecological footprint from a collective point of view.

If this is your case, and if you liked this article on how to calculate the ecological footprint, you may also be interested in this other article on How to be an ecological company.