Infographic - Our Ecological Footprint

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What is Your Ecological Footprint?

Ecological footprints are a measure of sustainability. In essence an ecological footprint measures how much people or nations consume versus how much they actually have. 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. 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.

Earth Overshoot Day 2013

This year August 20 is Earth Overshoot Day. This annual marker is the day when we begin living beyond our ecological means or the day when humanity exhausts nature’s budget.

Earth Overshoot Day is an approximate date when our resource consumption for a given year exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish.The measure helps us to acknowledge the gap between our demand for ecological resources and services, and how much the planet can provide.

World Population Day and Curbing Co2 Emissions on a Per Capita Basis

Thursday, July 11th, is World Population Day. The issue of population growth is highly contentious as many want to point their fingers at the developing world where we are seeing the largest population increases. This is particularly true of Africa. However, rather than look solely at population increases we need to consider the significantly lower national per capita Co2 emissions profiles of developing nations as compared to developed countries.

Growing population is undeniably a serious environmental issue. The earth has a finite carrying capacity which we are already exceeding. The more people there are on this earth the greater the demands we make on the planet's limited resources.