1. Environmental footprint

1.1 What is the environmental footprint?

A population's environmental footprint is represented by the biologically productive land required to produce the resources it consumes, and to assimilate the waste it generates. In other words, it provides, for a given year, an image of the total surface area of land required to produce all the economic products (goods and services) consumed within a territory (by its residents). It uses land as the measure of these demands. The unit of environmental footprint is the global hectare (hag). This unit will be described in more detail later in this article. The total surface area of land required for a territory (the territory's environmental footprint) is compared with the territory's actual available surface area (the territory's biocapacity)...