Ecological Footprint

" If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American we would need five planets "

According to the Global Footprint Network “The Ecological Footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resource it consumes and to absorb its wastes, using prevailing technology.”  It is measured in global Hectares (gHa)

“Our current global situation: Since the mid 1980s, humanity has been in ecological overshoot with annual demand on resources exceeding what Earth can regenerate each year.  It now takes the Earth one year and four months to regenerate what we use in a year.”

The requirement will be two planet earths by 2035 unless we undertake a rapid reduction of human consumption patterns, as shown in the image below.