Ecological_Footprint

Topic: Ecological Footprint Consumption Analysis

Introduction

The ecological footprint is the measurement of human consumption of natural assets such as plant-based food, livestock and fish products, forest resources and space for urban infrastructure. In recent years, the growth in Earth’s population has led to the increasing demand for these resources, which causes the ecological footprint exceeds the biocapacity (the productive area that can renew resources and absorb generated wastes such as carbon emissions). To prevent negative effects from excessive use of natural resources, it is important for people and authorities to understand the trends in the ecological footprint. This project aims to visualize the ecological footprint data by different countries and regions in order to figure out the areas with the greatest ecological deficits and identify the relationship between HDI and the ecological consumption.

Data Collection

The ecological footprint data was extracted from the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts 2019 Public Data Package provided by the Global Footprint Network. Additional data was downloaded from the Ecological Footprint Explorer open data platform using the website's API.

Objectives

The primary goal of this project is to analyze the trends in the amount of ecological footprint and visualize the ecological deficits/reverses. The ecological footprint is shown at various scales/levels (global, region, country and individual) with the use of two measurement units (global hectares and “number of Earths”). For more insights, the project also provides studies in different productive surface areas including carbon demand on lane, cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds and built-up land. This helps to demonstrate the growth of the ecological footprint in each kind of biocapacity and identify the areas that are in danger of resources exploitation. To evaluate the sustainability of human development, the project illustrates the growth of ecological footprint in regard to the measurement of HDI (Human Development Index – a quantity that summarizes the average achievement of human development in three primary dimensions: longevity, education and income).

Key Findings

There are some key findings to summarize from this project:

• The majority of Asia and Europe countries have been experiencing a considerable amount of ecological deficit. The region with the highest propotion of deficit is Middle East/Central Asia. The usage of natural resources in Middle East Asia have also rapidly increased during 1961-2016. On the other hand, South America has the best reserve of biocapacity.

• The global ecological footprint consumption has been maintained at about 3.0 GHA since 1961. However, the decrease in the biocapacity has led to the deficits in many regions. Carbon is the most exploited type of land to produce natural assets, whereas Fishing Grounds and Built-up Lands produce least ecological footprint consumptions.

• The ecological footprint consumption per capita appears to be very high in developed countries. In contrast, the smallest economies primarily located in Africa have very low ecological footprint usage (approximately 1.7 GHA or 1.0 number of Earths). This indicates that there seems to be a linear correlation between the human development and the consumption of natural assets.