Assessment of Metropolitan Environment Sustainability with Use of Ecological Footprint Index (Case Study: Tehran Metropolis)

Abstract

Sustainable development is an environmental reaction to traditional development patterns emphasis on coordinating development in the economic, social and environmental dimensions simultaneously. It specially takes two fundamental principles of natural resources preservation and observance of people’s rights in future satisfaction of the natural resources into consideration. Both qualitative and quantitative indicators for measuring sustainable development for many communities have been provided that one of the most efficient of them is ecological footprint index. This index is an introduction to environmental planning which is one of the crucial pillars to reach the maintainable environmental growth. Ecological footprint is applied to measure the progress of societies in to the sustainability. So far, the value of the ecological footprint in different levels global, national and regional have been estimated. The article outlines the “Evaluation on the Sustainability of Metropolitan Environment by Ecological Footprint Index”. Due to the growth of environmental problems, rapid development of urban area without planning, population grow of the city, changing in consumption patterns and unstable ecosystem, this study mainly focuses on Tehran metropolis. By considering the scale of the present study, six elements have been considered to estimate ecological footprint. These factors include: electricity, Warming natural gas, water, transportation, garbage and food. The rate of the land consumption for the population’s requirements of Tehran metropolis during 2006 and 2011 has been estimated by use of ecological footprint index. The results have shown that during these five years, the population of Tehran metropolis has raised five percent. Meanwhile, the amount of the ecological footprint index has also increased 22%. The trend illustrates that ecological footprint is not influenced by only the impact of population but also the amount of the wealth, consumption pattern, technology used along with unstable urban development are the main reasons of increasing Tehran metropolis ecological footprint.