Calculation of Ecological Footprint of a District Using An Emergy Analysis

Abstract

Every anthropogenic activity involves interaction with the nature around. The activity demands goods or services of the ecosystem around for consumption or regulation of pollution it has generated. Population’s well-being is affected by the resource availability and health. It becomes essential to measure the supply capacity of natural capital and human demand. The accounting helps in identifying challenges, setting targets, and making policy decisions for sustainability. Ecological footprint is one such method which helps in accounting the demand-supply process between human and environment. The present study calculates the ecological footprint and biocapacity of Nagpur district of Vidarbha, India using energy methodology. Consequently, the degree of sustainability is calculated in terms of ecological footprint index by estimating the gap between human consumption demand (in terms of ecological footprint) and nature’s supply ability (in terms of biocapacity). The present chapter calculates ecological footprint in local hectares, thereby accounting for the impact on regional ecosystem rather than global ecosystem, making assessment more realistic. It was observed that the ecological footprint index of Nagpur is 65.66%. The positive value of the ecological footprint index shows that Nagpur is working within the sustainable limits.