The ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate.^[1] It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody followed a given lifestyle. For 2007, humanity's total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.5 planet Earths; that is, humanity uses ecological services 1.5 times as quickly as Earth can renew them.^[2] Every year, this number is recalculated to incorporate the three-year lag due to the time it takes for the UN to collect and publish statistics and relevant research.

WWF:The Living Planet Report 2012 finds:

• Biodiversity continues to be lost: Populations of species continue to decline, with tropical and freshwater species experiencing the biggest declines. Learn more

• The U.S. has the fifth largest ecological footprint in terms of the amount of resources each person annually consumes. We rank only behind Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Denmark in the global rankings of the Ecological Footprint. Learn more

• Resource scarcity is already being experienced across the globe, as 2.7 billion people around the world already are forced to cope with water scarcity during at least one month a year.

WWF’s Solutions

Despite these challenges, we can create a prosperous future that provides food, water and energy for the 9 or 10 billion people who will be sharing the planet in 2050.

WWF urges governments at Rio+20 to start valuing nature in order to ensure food, water, and energy security. With the impact of our ecological footprint in mind, we must protect our natural resources while providing socio-economic benefits and allowing for sustainable development.

The challenge of sustaining life on an increasingly crowded planet is growing more complicated every day. How do we feed a growing global population and still maintain a living planet? WWF works to provide recommendations, that when taken together, could enable farms to feed 10 billion people and keep Earth habitable.

The Living Planet Report is the world's leading, science-based analysis on the health of our only planet and the impact of human activity.

Its key finding? Humanity's demands exceed our planet's capacity to sustain us. That is, we ask for more than what we have. The latest edition of the Living Planet Report was released in May 2012. You can read all about its findings in the links on the left, or click on the link and download the full report. 

In a world first, LPR 2012 was launched from space by astronaut André Kuipers in the International Space Station, in collaboration with the European Space Agency