Question

9. How are ecological footprints useful?

Answer 1

This is what the Ecological Footprint does: It measures the biologically productive area needed to provide for everything that people demand from nature: fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton and other fibres, as well as absorption of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and space for buildings and roads.

Why it's useful:

Ecological footprint (EF), measure of the demands made by a person or group of people on global natural resources. It has become one of the most widely used measures of humanity’s effect upon the environment and has been used to highlight both the apparent unsustainability of current practices and the inequalities in resource consumption between and within countries.

Answer 2

As ecological footprints provide an easily communicable way of measuring the ecological bottom‐line condition for sustainability, it is a useful tool for promoting a sustainable future. It is particularly useful for cities, as it is in cities where the battle for sustainability will be won or lost.