ecological footprint

English

First used by William E. Rees in 1992 and further refined by Mathis Wackernagel in his PhD thesis.[1]

ecological footprint (plural ecological footprints)

A measure of how much biologically productive land and water area an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates using prevailing technology and resource management practices.
Coordinate term: carbon footprint
- 2017, Luca Marazzi, Our Ecological Footprint, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 44:
  Cities are graphically represented as a human foot to make a straightforward connection between the ecological footprint metaphor and the impact of urban life on local and distant environments.

measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems

Mathis Wackernagel (1994) Ecological Footprint and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: A Tool for Planning Toward Sustainability‎, Vancouver, Canada: School of Community and Regional Planning. The University of British Columbia, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 July 2011:
Adding up the land requirement of all these categories provides an aggregate or total area which we call the “Ecological Footprint” of a defined economy on Earth. This area represents the carrying capacity which is “appropriated” (or occupied) by that economy for providing the total flow of goods and services. Another name for the Ecological Footprint is, therefore, the “Appropriated Carrying Capacity” of the economy.