{"id":30259,"date":"2024-03-16T09:49:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T16:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.footprintnetwork.org\/?page_id=30259"},"modified":"2025-07-08T20:07:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T03:07:19","slug":"what-ecological-footprints-measure","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.footprintnetwork.org\/what-ecological-footprints-measure\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Ecological Footprint measures"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ecological Footprint is a metric of human demand on ecosystems, or more precisely on the planet\u2019s biocapacity<\/a>. It tracks how much mutually exclusive, biologically productive area is necessary to renew people\u2019s demand for nature\u2019s products and services. The principles and the measurement methods are described in detail in Borucke et al. (2013)<\/a>, Lin et al. (2018)<\/a>, Wackernagel et al. (2019)<\/a>, and in the supplement of Wackernagel et al. (2021)<\/a>. A fuller introduction is available in Wackernagel and Beyers<\/a> (2019).<\/p>\n

The demands on nature compete for biocapacity<\/a> These demands compete for the biologically productive space that:<\/p>\n

\u25cf\u00a0 provides food, fiber, timber, etc.
\n\u25cf\u00a0 accommodates roads and structures,
\n\u25cf\u00a0 enables energy production (from hydropower to biomass),
\n\u25cf\u00a0 absorbs or neutralizes economies’ waste, incl. CO2<\/sub> from fossil fuel burning or cement production.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Humanity demands goods and services from nature that require 21.7 billion global hectares to renew them, as of 2025. This is more than the 12.2 billion global hectares of biologically productive area (or biocapacity<\/a>) available on the planet. Excessive demand means that humanity, by now, uses 1.8 times more than the amount the biosphere currently renews. Some describe this level of consumption as using 1.8 Earths. For maintaining robust biodiversity and climate, ecologists estimate that humans should not demand more than half of the biocapacity on Earth, or over 3 times less than the current demand. (We gratefully acknowledge Foster+Partners<\/a>\u00a0for producing the initial version of this illustration).\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ecological Footprint accounts use as their measurement unit the “global hectare” which is a biologically productive hectare with world-average productivity. The carbon footprint<\/em><\/a> is an integral part of the ecological footprint. In Ecological Footprint accounts, carbon emissions are expressed in global hectares, but often, carbon footprints are also measured in tonnes of CO2<\/sub> per year. Also, many report only on the carbon footprint, and ignore its ecological context. In contrast, the water footprint,<\/em> inspired by the ecological footprint, tracks embodied (virtual) water. Water use<\/a> in the Ecological Footprint context is measured in terms of its embodied biocapacity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While applicable at any scale, the most prominent accounts are the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts,<\/a> based on UN statistics. They are now independently produced annually by the Footprint Data Foundation, in collaboration with York University, Toronto. Results for 2024<\/a> and 2005 show that human demand exceeded the planet\u2019s regeneration by at least 78% (Lo et al. 2025).<\/p>\n

For sub-global Ecological Footprint assessments, one needs to distinguish between:<\/p>\n