How to calculate National Footprint

How to calculate National Footprint

In order to support urban infrastructure, the human race relies heavily on ecosystem products, including resources, space, waste absorbing capacity, etc. While the environment has a fairly stable process of regeneration and absorptive capacity in the biosphere—instances, such as collapsing fisheries, deforestation and accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere show that the human demand has exceeded the regenerative capacity of the biosphere.

In order to have processes that are sustainable and do not exhaust the environment of its resources, the National Footprint Accounts aims to offer careful management of all human interaction with the environment and the regenerative capacity of the biosphere.

Calculation Of Ecological Footprint And Biocapacity

The demands that humanity place on the environment, in terms of land, water, resources, in a given year is termed as the ecological footprint. On the other hand, the supply of the biosphere, the amount of land and sea that are biologically productive, is the biocapacity.

In 2010, the National Footprint Accounts calculated the ecological footprint and biocapacity of more than 200 countries from the years 1961 to 2007. The data they used for calculations was derived from international data sets, such as the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, the International Energy Agency and the UN Statistics Division.

Calculation

The appropriated biocapacity is expressed in global average bioproductive hectares. This includes five different land use types, and one indirect form of biocapacity demand as carbon dioxide emissions.

Calculation of the Ecological Footprint of production, that describes the biocapacity’s demand, is given as:

EFp = (P/Yn) . YF . EQF

Here,

P shows the amount of a harvested product or CO2 emitted

Yn shows the national average yield for the product P

YF is the yield factor

EQF is the equivalence factor

Yield factor and Equivalence factors are land-specific and translate the data from the particular land into world average.

For keeping track of both indirect and direct demand of biocapacity to support human consumption, the Ecological Footprint methodology incorporates an approach which is consumer-based. In this regard, for the particular type of land used, the Ecological footprint of consumption (EFc) is calculates as:

EFc = EFp + EF1 – Efe

Here,

EFp is the Ecological footprint of consumption

EF1 are the footprints in imported commodity flows

EF2 are the footprints in exported commodity flows

By calculating the Ecological footprint at the national level, footprints of traded goods are properly allocated to their respective consumers as the production and trade data at this level are readily available.

For Derived Products

The assessments of Ecological Footprint are for measuring demand of biocapacity as per final demand; however, it is tallied at the point of carbon emission or primary harvest. Therefore, the tracking of Ecological Footprint in the derived products is vital in associating the Ecological Footprint of production to its end users.

The primary and derived products are related to each other by their extraction rates. These rates are product specific and the effective yield can be calculated as:

Yd = Yp . EXTRd

The Yp is the yield of primary product and Yd for the derived product.

More often, the EXTRd is the mass ratio of derived product to the primary input that is required. This ratio is denoted as the technical conversion factor and is given as:

EXTRd = TCFd / FAFd

Here,

FAFd is the Footprint allocation factor

The Footprint allocation factor can be calculated as:

FAFd = TCFd . Vd / ∑ TCFi . Vi

Here,

Vi shows the market price of every simultaneous derived product

Now, a country’s biocapacity for any and is calculated as:

BC = A . YF . EQF

Here,

A is the area available

YF is the yield factor

EQF is the equivalence factor

Conclusion

In order for countries, cities and businesses to stay competitive, effective resource accounting tools are necessary. The Ecological Footprint is the resource accounting tool that tracks human demand in comparison with the absorptive and regenerative capacity of the biosphere.