Ecological Footprints

Ecological Footprints

Ecological Footprints is a technique of measuring carrying capacity by human activities. An economist Heman Daly described how the benefits are less than the monetary effort put on producing them as reducing the natural capital & called it as “Uneconomic Growth” Therefore the countries need to take serious measures against this threat to environment. Sustainability of operations is directly proportional to the environment performance. The more the EF is done effectively the more positive results it will have on environment & lessen the negative impact by the society for its survival on environment. That’s why companies are so concerned with ecological footprint (EF). There are various tools for this including Water, carbon, and biodiversity footprint. Tools also include Life Cycle assessment & Material Flow analysis.  These all are very effective tool for increasing organizations operational sustainability but there are certain challenges an organization have to go through to use it effectively.

Challenges:

The organizations mostly don’t have the adequate amount of input data required as this data shows the input energy & materials. That’s why companies hesitate to perform it.

Analysis Steps:

The total effect on land should be determined by analyzing the direct land required & consumption from land. For ease of analysis it is further divided in four

·         Energy Land

·         Consumed Land

·         Farm Land

·         Forest Land

Calculating EF for Mining Companies:

Ecological footprint of water is higher in land of deserts i.e. Gulf Countries & North Africa. Shadow Footprint is a term used to describe the negative impact of excess consumption of water by humans. Difference between EF & others techniques is that EF measures the required resources with total demand in terms of units.

EFQ (Equivalence Factor) represents average productivity of given area as compared to the world.

YF (Yield Factor) shows the difference in local & global average productivity

Relationship between Physical & Global Hectares is as;

Biocapcity (gha) = area (ha) × EQF (gha/ha) ×YF

Energy Land

It is the area required to hide away the Carbon Dioxide emitted by fossil fuels & do not include the other forms of greenhouse gases. The sequestration rate is calculated by subtracting one-third of anthropogenic emissions (absorbed by oceans) from total anthropogenic emissions.

Area (ha) = Carbon Dioxide Emissions (t) × (1- fraction absorbed by oceans/sequestration rate)

Build Land

The area being built upon or constructed in any form or the other & transport allocated areas are summed & multiplied with Yield Area for productive land

Water Land

To calculate shadow footprint’ of water for a site, the internal, annually renewable water resources (in km3) of the country in question are divided by the surface area of the country. This generates a value in hectares per unit volume

Results from Mines & Plants

·         Food land: 2–2.2% of footprint

·         Forest land: 0.1–0.2%

·         Carbon land: 33–44% (more if grid power is sourced from fossil fuels, less if diesel gensets are used)

·         Consumed land: 0.05%  

·         Shadow footprint of water: 50–65% in an arid climate

Results of Different Countries

The results are different for different countries depending upon the environment & geographical area of that countries. This also tells that results differ due to the difference in scarcity of resources in that particular environmental setting & also due to the difference in rate of demand. It also shows difference in results of different types of operations in same environmental settings, the different operations consume the resources in different ratios.

CONCLUSION

Despite several shortcomings, EFA provides valuable insights into the long-term ecological sustainability of industrial systems & organizations should try to use it.