STUDY OF ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

Sudip Acharya

Acknowledgement I would like to offer my special thanks to those who have contributed towards the completion of this paper. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my teacher Ishowari Prasad Banjade and Ass.pro Binod Baniya for the suggestion during the preparation of this paper.

This paper was possible due to the support I have received from Ishowari Prasad Banjade . I would like to express my appreciation to him.

I am particularly grateful to Patan Multiple campus for providing me opportunity to carry out this research. I wish to acknowledge the help provided by the Ashok Pokheral, Sunita Bhandari, Renuka Poudel, Niranjana Neupane, and Kalpana Hamal .

I would like to thank all the teachers of Patan multiple campus for providing me the information what I would like to understand.

Sudip Acharya

Contents

Chapter: I ..................................................................................................................................... 4

1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 4

Bio-capacity.......................................................................................................................... 4

Global hectare ....................................................................................................................... 5

1.2 Problem statement ............................................................................................................... 5

1.3 Objectives:.......................................................................................................................... 6

1.3.1: Broad Objective: .......................................................................................................... 6

1.3.2: Specific Objective: ....................................................................................................... 6

1.4 Significance/Output of the study........................................................................................... 6

1.5 Limitation of the research .................................................................................................... 6

Chapter II..................................................................................................................................... 7

1.2: Literature Review: .............................................................................................................. 7

Chapter III ................................................................................................................................... 9

Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 9

3.1: Description of the study area: .............................................................................................. 9

3.2: Study method: .................................................................................................................... 9

3.2.1 Literature review and consultation.................................................................................. 9

3.2.3 Sample collection.......................................................................................................... 9

3.2.4 Questionnaire................................................................................................................ 9

3.2.4 Size of the sample ........................................................................................................10

3.3 data source and interpretation ..............................................................................................10

CHAPTER IV .............................................................................................................................11

Data collection and Interpretation .............................................................................................11

4.1 Data collection ...................................................................................................................11

4.2 Interpretation of the data: ....................................................................................................14

4.3 Implications of data ............................................................................................................15

4.4 Ecological Footprint and Sustainability. ...............................................................................15

CHAPTER V ..............................................................................................................................16

Conclusion and Recommendation .................................................................................................16

Chapter V ...................................................................................................................................19

Reference ................................................................................................................................19

Chapter: I 1.1 Introduction

How many planets would we need if everyone lived like you? An ecological footprint measures the total amount of land and resources used; it includes your carbon footprint but goes further. It accounts for the flows of energy and matter to and from any defined economy and converts these into the corresponding land/water area required for nature to support these flows. The Ecological Footprint is defined as "the area of productive land and water ecosystems required producing the resources that the population consumes and assimilate the wastes that the population produces, wherever on Earth the land and water is located."

The ecological footprint was originally conceived as a simple and elegant method for comparing the

sustainability of resource use among different populations. Since the formulation of the ecological

footprint, a number of researchers have mentioned the oversimplification in ecological footprints of the

complex task of measuring sustainability of consumption. In particular, aggregated forms of the final

ecological footprint make it difficult to understand the specific reasons for the unsustainability of the

consumption of a given population, and to formulate appropriate policy responses. While generally

acknowledged as a valuable educational tool that has enriches the sustainability debate, the original

ecological footprint is limited as a regional policy and planning tool for ecologically sustainable

development, because it does not reveal where impacts really occur, what the nature and severity of

these impacts are, and how these impacts compare with the self-repair capability of the respective

ecosystem. In response to the problems highlighted, the concept has undergone significant modification.

These modifications include: use of input-output analysis, renewable energy scenarios, land disturbance

as a better proxy for sustainability, and the use of production layer decomposition, structural path

analysis and multivariate regression in order to reveal rich footprint details. Comprehensive input -

output-based ecological footprints are now calculated in many countries, and applied to populations,

companies, cities, regions and nations. Ecological footprint is the world's premier measure of human

demand on earth ecosystem, rooted in the fact that all renewable resources come from earth. The total

“footprint” for a designated population’s activities is measured in terms of ‘global hectares.’ A global

hectare (acre) is one hectare (2.47 acres) of biologically productive space with an annual productivity

equal to the world average.

Bio-capacity is the capacity of ecosystem to produce biological materials useful for people and to

absorb waste they generated (CO2 from burning of fossil foils) using current management schemes and

extraction of technologies. Bio-capacity is usually expressed in Unit of global hectares. The bio-

capacity of an area is calculated by adjusting the area for its productivity.

Global hectare

The global hectare (gha) is a common unit that quantifies the bio-capacity of the earth. One global

hectare measures the average productivity of all biologically productive areas (measured in hectares)

on earth in a given year.

Examples of biologically productive areas include cropland, forests, and fishing grounds; they do not

include deserts, glaciers, and the open ocean."Global hectare per person" refers to the amount of

biologically productive land and water available per person on the planet. e.g., in 2005 there were 13.4

billion hectares of biologically productive land and water available and 6.5 billion people on the planet.

This is an average of 2.1 global hectares per person. Due to rapid population growth, this figure is

decreasing.

The global hectare is a useful measure of bio-capacity as it can convert things like human dietary

requirements into a physical area, which can show how many people a certain region on earth can

sustain, assuming current technologies and agricultural methods. It can be used as a way of determining

the relative carrying capacity of the earth.

A given hectare of land may be measured in equivalent global hectares. For example, a hectare of lush

area with high rainfall would be scale higher in global hectares than would a hectare of desert.

It can also be used to show that consuming different foods may increase the earth's ability to support

larger populations. To illustrate, producing meat generally requires more land and energy than what

producing vegetables requires; sustaining a meat-based diet would require a less populated planet.

1.2 Problem statement

As we all know we all want high service, lifestyle with much pleasure and advance infrastructure. So

people of developed countries and urban people may not believe in changing their advanced lifestyle

which leads in more consumption of resources and ecological food print will be higher. If people are

more conscious about their resource consumption pattern and can adopt alternatives in their daily

increasing ecological footprint

shrinking ecological credit(Bio-capacity)

lifestyle to save our planet earth we can surely live in our planet for many next years in those available

resources.

1.3 Objectives:

1.3.1: Broad Objective:

To study the ecological footprint of the different students having different lifestyle and analyze how to

decrease the ecological foot print.

1.3.2: Specific Objective:

At the end of the study, the research will be able to provide sufficient background that addresses the

following issues.

To find out the ecological needs by per person.

To find out how much land is required to meet the demand of people having same lifestyle.

To find out how we can adopt the ecofriendly behavior to reduce the demand per day by

individual in practice.

The major objective of measuring ecological foot print is to know how much resource we are

using now and what its adverse impact to the nature is.

1.4 Significance/Output of the study

The study will show how one can reduce their ecological footprint by changing their regular behaviors.

This will let us know the differences that small things will make and the contribution of these differences

to the environment.

The participants filling the form will come to be familiar with the components that the ecological

footprint deals with. The final result will be documented. This will also be outreached through social

Medias. We believe this will open the eyes of many. The promotion and reaching to the aware

population will at least make them little more conscious towards the environment and let them rethink

towards their daily lifestyle.

The small research in this limited time with limited number of participants will prove to be worth as

this will further encourage other rising researchers to conduct in a larger context.

1.5 Limitation of the research

Analysis of the ecological footprint was done. The research was quite successful but there are certain

limitation that cannot be neglected as all the sample selected does not have the internet service for whole

the day so the data should be collected in the limited time period. The regular communication to the

sample population was quite hard. There is no knowledge about the ecological footprint in the sample

population so the sample population has given some information about the ecological footprint.

Chapter II 1.2: Literature Review:

The ecological footprint was originally conceived as a simple and elegant method for comparing the

sustainability of resource use among different populations (Rees 1992). The consumption of these

populations is converted into a single index: the land area that would be needed to sustain that

population indefinitely. This area is then compared to the actual area of productive land that the given

population inhabits, and the degree of unsustainability is calculated as the difference between available

and required land. Unsustainable populations are simply populations with a higher ecological footprint

than available land. Ecological footprints calculated according to this original method became important

educational tools in highlighting the unsustainability of global consumption (Costanza 2000). It was

also proposed that ecological footprints could be used for policy design and planning (Wackernagel et

al. 1997, Wackernagel and Silverstein 2000).

The original ecological footprint is defined as the land area that would be needed to meet the

consumption of a population and to absorb all their waste (Wackernagel and Rees 1995). Consumption

is divided into 5 categories: food, housing, transportation, consumer goods, and services. Land is

divided into 8 categories: energy land, degraded or built land, gardens, crop land, pastures and managed

forests, and 'land of limited availability', considered to be untouched forests and 'non-productive areas.

The 'nonproductive' areas are not included further in the analysis. Data are collected from disparate

sources such as production and trade accounts, state of the environment reports, and agricultural, fuel

use and emissions statistics. In order to calculate the per-capita ecological footprint, all land areas are

added up, and then divided by the population, giving a result in hectares per capita. For example, the

land that was needed in 1991 to support the lifestyle of an average Canadian was calculated by

Wackernagel and Rees (1995, p. 83) to be 2.34 ha energy land, 0.2 ha degraded land, 0.02 ha garden,

0.66 ha crop land, 0.46 ha pasture, and 0.59 ha forest, giving a total ecological footprint of 4.27 ha per

capita.

In the calculation of ecological footprints of populations by Wackernagel and Rees (1995) and Simpson

et al. (2000), the land areas included were mainly those directly required by households, and those

required by the producers of consumer items. These producers, however, draw on numerous input items

themselves, and the producers of these inputs also require land. Generally speaking, in modern

economies all industry sectors are dependent on all other sectors, and this process of industrial

interdependence proceeds infinitely in an upstream direction, through the whole life cycle of all

products, like the branches of an infinite tree.

Chapter III

Methodology

3.1: Description of the study area:

For the study of the ecological footprint Patan Multiple Campus environment science students with the

sample size 5 is selected. The sample of the population is selected with the non-random convince

sampling method. Patan multiple campus is the Tribhuvan University affiliated campus, studying

various faculties. Patan multiple campus is located in Patandhoka, lalitpur Nepal. The Patan multiple

campus students are selected for the determination of the ecological footprint by using nonrandom

sampling method.

3.2: Study method:

3.2.1 Literature review and consultation

The researcher should carefully study the earlier studies, if any, which are similar to the study. For this

purpose one can use abstract & index of journals and published and unpublished bibliographies etc. The

articles related with the problems must be studied from different Academic journals, Conference

Proceedings, Government reports, Books. Beside field visit review of literature also a best method for the

study. We have reached the different research report from internet for more information about the

ecological footprint. For the review of similar research activities conducted in that are review of was done

from the different journals in internet, published documents in article, different book, government papers

national trust for nature conservation website was conducted

3.2.3 Sample collection

Sample collection is very important and difficult part for the research worker. The sample collected

should represent the whole the population so that the sample collected should be reliable and valid.

There are different methods of sample collection simple random sampling, systematic sampling, cluster

sampling, probability sampling, multistage sampling, and stratified sampling depending on the

objective of the sample. Sampling technique is highly specified topic. The few selected units have to be

selected as are representative of whole population the few selected units of the population are called

sample. The condition for sample collection are:

1. each and every unit of the population must have non-zero probability for the inclusion of the

sample selected

2. the selection of the sample should be done according to accepted statically procedure known as

sampling technique

The sample collection depends on the purpose of the sample here purposive sampling was done.

3.2.4 Questionnaire

It is popular method of data collection used in case of big inquiries .It is adopted by individua ls,

researcher, private organization, public organization, governmental organization etc. It is sent to the

concerned persons with request to answer the questions and return the questionnaire.

It is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information

from respondents. It is to be filled up by respondents. It is a valuable method of collecting a wide range

of information from a large number of individuals. The questioner and interview was done based on the

internet service. Every sample population are given the website for the calculation of the ecological

footprint. And the calculation based on the internet service was done.

3.2.4 Size of the sample

Size of the sample is the important factor to be considered in sampling. The size of the sample

determines the cost, accuracy administration of the survey. Though large sample give the small standard

error they are generally unfit for the detail study, difficult to manage. Here in this method the sample

size will be taken as 5 individual.

3.3 data source and interpretation

For the different research activity mainly primary and secondary data sources are used. For the

calculation of the ecological foot print primary data was used based on the questioner survey conducted.

Secondary data are used in case of literature review and analysis of the data. The source of data collected

is primary source of data which was collected according to the objective of the study. The main process

of the collection of data is interview, focus group discussion. Interpretation of the result should be

rational. While interpreting the result from the data, errors must be considered. The different statistical

procedure are commonly used to interpret the result. Following points are used for the data collection

and interpretation.

Basically data is collected in every week from 5 people. We will provide them an ecological

footprint calculator form and remind them the day before of its form submission.

After that we will collect these data and present them in a bar graph for individual and also

for the next day same procedure will be repeated.

We will have a group meeting to discuss and analyze our data that has been collected and

also we will note that how much we can improve in our daily behavior to reduce demand

of our daily needs.

CHAPTER IV

Data collection and Interpretation

4.1 Data collection

Sample population selected using the purposive sampling are questioner surveyed by using the internet

service and data was collected by using the primary data collection technique using questioner survey.

The data was collected in regular interval of time for 5 time once a week, each time (each week)

changing the habitat of the population to decrease the ecological foot print.

Table 4.1

Ecological footprint different students of Patan Multiple campus.

Name 1st data 2nd data 3rd data 4th data

5th data

Renuka 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.5

Ashok 0.9 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.5

Niranjana 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.4

Kalpana 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.4

Sunita’s 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4

Note: all the above data are taken in global hector per individual.

Major Findings of Study:

All the data was collected from different students of Patan multiple campus having different living

standard and different life styles. All the data collected based on the internet service and website

which enables to calculate the Ecological footprint.

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

1st data 30-Apr 7-May 14-May 22-May

Are

a p

er

glo

bal

he

ctar

e

Dates of data collection (April 23 to may 22)

Sunita's Ecological Footprint

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Data 1 30-Apr 7-May 14-May 22-May

Are

a p

er

glo

bal

He

ctar

e

Dates of data taken(April 23 to may 22)

Ecological footprint of Ashok

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

Data 1 30-Apr 7-May 14-May 22-May

Are

a p

er

glo

bal

he

ctar

e

Dates of data collection(April 23 to may 22)

Neranzana's Ecological Foot Print

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

Data 1 30-Apr 7-May 14-May 22-May

Are

a p

er

glo

bal

he

ctar

e

Dates of data collection(April 23 to May 22)

Kalpana's Eologiootprintcal Footprint

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

Day 1st 30-Apr 7-May 14-May 22-May

Are

a p

er

glo

bal

he

ctar

e

Dates of data collection(April 23 to May 22)

Renuka's Ecological Footprint

4.2 Interpretation of the data:

It can be concluded that the ecological footprint of all the sample students has decreased due to the

regular change of the behavior of the students. It conforms that in global scale the ecological footprint

can be managed or can be changed by simply changing the habitat towards the ecological behavior.

Now a days the issue of the global warming and climate change are alarming the world scientists for

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

Renuka Ashok Neranzana Sunita’s Kalpana

Are

a re

qu

ire

d p

er

glo

ba

he

ctar

e

Name of participants in data collection in different dates

1st data

2nd data

3rd data

4th data

5th data

22%

23%

15%

23%

17%

Average ecological footprint

Sudip Kalpana Sunita Neranzana Ashok

the decrease in the emission of the greenhouse gases. So the decrease in the personal ecological footprint

can contribute for the decrease in the emission of the greenhouse gases at the personal level.

4.3 Implications of data

The global average availability of bio-productive land + sea per person is 1.8global hectares person, we

have the highest ecological footprint measured in our research is 0.9 at first date. Though we are living

in developing country, national water system is sufficient to feed our population if we managed it

properly, have lots of greenery and agricultural land, we noticed that we have much lower ecological

footprint than the developed countries like USA and Canada.

Also above data shows the variations with the date, we all are students and conscious about our current

practice, we collected data in every week for continuous 5 week by changing our feeding, living and

travelling behavior. We reduced our meat consumption rate, least amount of money spent in clothing

and travelled in public vehicle, and for short distance we've walked. Over the period of 35days we

totally change our daily behavior so we can assume that what if everyone will live like us.

4.4 Ecological Footprint and Sustainability.

The ecological footprint attempts to answer one central sustainability question "how much of the bio-

productive capacity of the biosphere is used by human activities?" Footprint accounting answers with

that question by translating all humans demand on the biosphere in to the amount of productive area

required to support these demands, either through producing resources or assimilating wastes. This can

be then compared to the total biologically productive land available at global level or within specific

region. (MC Intyre and peters, 2007)

CHAPTER V

Conclusion and Recommendation

Ecological footprint figure confirms us about the degree of sustainability of our lifecycle from the

environmental perspectives. It demonstrates how much resources we have and how rapidly we are using

them for our present existence. It illustrates either we are on right track by maintaining the balance or

we are living on environmental credits, burrowing our resources from future generations. The regular

decrease in the ecological foot print of the sample collected is due to regular change in the habitat of

the sample such as go vegetarian for 1 week, decrease in travelling through plan and private vehicles

and cars, no use of fish, meat, dairy product, egg, milk, etc., less use of the house heating instruments

such as kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, etc., walk short distance instead of using the vehicles also

help in the decrease in the ecological footprint. The value of ecological footprint is also determined by

the policy of the government and governing system. The value of the ecological footprint is found to be

highest for United Kingdom where the average value of the ecological footprint is greater than 5 global

hector per person. The value of the ecological footprint is less in the developing country like Nepal,

Somalia etc. the value of the ecological footprint is high in the developed countries like Australia,

United States of America, United Kingdom.

For the persons who wants to research the similar types of research I would like to suggest to research

in carbon footprint, contribution per individual for the different type of persons including constituent

makers and the street persons and compare the footprint of these peoples.

Chapter V

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http://www.slideshare.net/ShakilURP06BUET/ecological-as-a-sustainability-indicator-14964789

http://www.slideshare.net/ShakilURP06BUET/ecological-as-a-sustainability-indicator

http://www.slideshare.net/drsuneel/ecological-footprint-11736726

http://footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculator

Questioner for Ecological footprint calculation:

Name of the respondent: country:

1. How often do you eat meat?

2. How often do you eat fish?

3. How often do you eat egg, meat and dairy?

4. How do you spend on household consumer items? (Home, clothing and furnishing etc.)

5. How many people live in your household?

6. What is the size of your home?

7. How do you heat your home?

8. How far do you travel by car each week?

9. What is the fuel consumption of your car you travel in most often?

10. How often do you drive in a car with someone else?

11. How far do you travel by public transit each week?

12. How many hours do you travel each year?