Climate

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the North, and population numbers contribute to our impact on the environment. The impact of all our activities can be likened to an imprint or 'footprint' on Earth. This imprint is referred to as our 'Ecological Footprint'.
Just as we say that a computer has a big or small 'footprint', depending on how much space it takes up on our desktop, we can say that the lifestyle choices we make have a footprint on the Earth. Our Ecological Footprint is a measure of the human impact on nature - it shows how much productive land and water we use to produce all the resources we consume and to take in all the waste we make.
Ecological footprint analysis an innovative and rigorous way of measuring whether the impacts of our lifestyle choices are sustainable.
Increasingly, we are coming to realise that we are using up more resources than nature can replace and producing far more waste than nature can safely absorb. So, it is sometimes said that the human Ecological Footprint is too large. ...

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at least 12% of the biologically productive land on Earth (as recommended by the World Commision on Environment and Development calculation), the available biologically-productive space would shrink from 2.1 to 1.8 hectares per person.
We can calculate if there is enough land for our needs by multiplying the figure of 1.8 hectares per person by the total number of people in the world, and comparing the result with the biologically productive land available. Unfortunately, this shows that we are exceeding the Earth's capacity by 20%.
In other words, we are consuming more than what nature can regenerate and, therefore, are eating up the Earth's stock of natural capital. Scientists call ...

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