Ecological Footprint accounting documents the extent to which human economies stay within the regenerative capacity of the planet, and who uses which portion of this capacity. Such biophysical resource accounting is possible because resources and waste flows can be tracked, and most of these flows can be associated with the biologically productive areas required to maintain them. The Ecological Footprint of a population is the area of biologically productive land and sea required to produce the resources this population consumes and to assimilate the wastes it generates, given prevailing technology. By measuring the overall supply of and human demand on the Earth’s regenerative capacity, the Ecological Footprint provides a tool for tracking progress, setting targets, and driving policies for sustainability. The Ecological Footprint can be applied at scales from single products to households, organizations, cities, regions, nations, and humanity as a whole. It has been applied by the European Environment Agency to provide context to State of the Environment reporting.
