Biocapacity

Last updated

The biocapacity or biological capacity of an ecosystem is an estimate of its production of certain biological materials such as natural resources, and its absorption and filtering of other materials such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. [1] [2]

Contents

Biocapacity is used together with ecological footprint as a method of measuring human impact on the environment. Biocapacity and ecological footprint are tools created by the Global Footprint Network, used in sustainability studies around the world.

Biocapacity is expressed in terms of global hectares per person, thus is dependent on human population. A global hectare is an adjusted unit that represents the average biological productivity of all productive hectares on Earth in a given year (because not all hectares produce the same amount of ecosystem services). Biocapacity is calculated from United Nations population and land use data, and may be reported at various regional levels, such as a city, a country, or the world as a whole.

For example, there were roughly 12.2 billion hectares of biologically productive land and water areas on this planet in 2016. Dividing by the number of people alive in that year, 7.4 billion, gives a biocapacity for the Earth of 1.6 global hectares per person. These 1.6 global hectares includes the areas for wild species that compete with people for space. [3]

Applications of biocapacity

An increase in global population can result in a decrease in biocapacity. This is usually due to the fact that the Earth's resources have to be shared; therefore, there becomes little to supply the increasing demand of the increasing population. [4] Currently, this issue can be resolved by outsourcing. However, resources will run out due to the increasing demands and as a result a collapse of an ecosystem can be the consequence of such actions. [4] When the ecological footprint becomes greater than the biocapacity of the population, a biocapacity deficit is suspected. [5] 'Global biocapacity' is a term sometimes used to describe the total capacity of an ecosystem to support various continuous activity and changes. When the ecological footprint of a population exceeds the biocapacity of the environment it lives in, this is called an 'biocapacity deficit'. Such a deficit comes from three sources: overusing one's own ecosystems ("overshoot"), net imports, or use of the global commons. [5] [6] Latest data from Global Footprint Network suggests that humanity was using an equivalence of 1.7 Earths in 2016. [7] The dominant factor of global ecological overshoot comes from carbon dioxide emissions stemming from fossil fuel burning. [8] Additional stresses of greenhouse gases, climate change, and ocean acidification can also aggravate the problem. [4] In reference to the definition of biocapacity: 1.7 Earths means the renewable resources are being liquidated because they are being consumed faster than the resources can regenerate. [4] Therefore, it will take one year and eight months for the resources humanity uses in one year to be able to regenerate again, including absorbing all the waste we generate. [4] So instead of taking one year's worth of resources per year, we are yearly consuming resources that should last us one year and eight months.

In addition, if this matter becomes severe, an ecological reserve will be set on areas to preserve their ecosystems. Awareness about our depleting resources include: agricultural land, forest resources and rangeland. [9] Biocapacity used in correlation to ecological footprint can therefore suggest whether a specific population, region, country or part of a world is living in the means of their capital. Accordingly, the study of biocapacity and ecological footprint is known as the Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA). [1]

Biocapacity is also affected by the technology used during the year. With new technologies emerging, it is not clear whether the technology in that year is good or bad but the technology does impact resource supply and demand, which in turn affects biocapacity. [1] Hence what is considered “useful” can change from year to year (e.g. use of corn (maize) stover for cellulosic ethanol production would result in corn stover becoming a useful material, and thus increase the biocapacity of maize cropland).

Moreover, environmentalists have created ecological footprint calculators for a single person(s) to determine whether they are encompassing more than what is available for them in their population. [10] Consequently, biocapacity results will be applied to their ecological footprint to determine how much they may contribute or take away from sustainable development.

In general, biocapacity is the amount of resources available to people at a specific moment in time to a specific population (supply) and to differentiate between ecological footprint – which is the environmental demand of a regional ecosystem. [10] Biocapacity is able to determine the human impacts on Earth. By determining productivity of land (i.e. the resources available for human consumption), biocapacity will be able to predict and perhaps examine the effects on the ecosystems closely based on collected results of human consumption. The biocapacity of an area is calculated by multiplying the actual physical area by the yield factor with the appropriate equivalence factor. Biocapacity is usually expressed in global hectares (gha). [11] Since global hectares is able to convert human consumptions like food and water into a measurement, biocapacity can be applied to determine the carrying capacity of the Earth. Likewise, because an economy is tied to various production factors such as natural resources, biocapacity can also be applied to determine human capital. [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available. The carrying capacity is defined as the environment's maximal load, which in population ecology corresponds to the population equilibrium, when the number of deaths in a population equals the number of births. The effect of carrying capacity on population dynamics is modelled with a logistic function. Carrying capacity is applied to the maximum population an environment can support in ecology, agriculture and fisheries. The term carrying capacity has been applied to a few different processes in the past before finally being applied to population limits in the 1950s. The notion of carrying capacity for humans is covered by the notion of sustainable population.

<i>I = PAT</i> Equates human impact on the environment

I = (PAT) is the mathematical notation of a formula put forward to describe the impact of human activity on the environment.

Overconsumption describes a situation where a consumer overuses their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this may be described as the point where the marginal cost of a consumer is greater than their marginal utility. The term overconsumption is quite controversial in use and does not necessarily have a single unifying definition. When used to refer to natural resources to the point where the environment is negatively affected, is it synonymous with the term overexploitation. However, when used in the broader economic sense, overconsumption can refer to all types of goods and services, including manmade ones, e.g. "the overconsumption of alcohol can lead to alcohol poisoning". Overconsumption is driven by several factors of the current global economy, including forces like consumerism, planned obsolescence, economic materialism, and other unsustainable business models and can be contrasted with sustainable consumption.

The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region, nation, or the world. In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment and whether that impact is sustainable.

Ecological yield is the harvestable population growth of an ecosystem. It is most commonly measured in forestry: sustainable forestry is defined as that which does not harvest more wood in a year than has grown in that year, within a given patch of forest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William E. Rees</span>

William Rees, FRSC, is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecological debt</span> Environmental debt between Global North and South

Ecological debt refers to the accumulated debt seen by some campaigners as owed by the Global North to Global South countries, due to the net sum of historical environmental injustice, especially through resource exploitation, habitat degradation, and pollution by waste discharge. The concept was coined by Global Southerner non-governmental organizations in the 1990s and its definition has varied over the years, in several attempts of greater specification.

The "Melbourne Principles" for Sustainable Cities are ten short statements on how cities can become more sustainable. They were developed in Melbourne (Australia) on 2 April 2002 during an international Charrette, sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Experts at the Charrette were drawn from developing and developed countries.

The global hectare (gha) is a measurement unit for the ecological footprint of people or activities and the biocapacity of the Earth or its regions. One global hectare is the world's annual amount of biological production for human use and human waste assimilation, per hectare of biologically productive land and fisheries.

Mathis Wackernagel is a Swiss-born sustainability advocate. He is President of Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank with offices in Oakland, California, and Geneva, Switzerland. The think-tank is a non-profit that focuses on developing and promoting metrics for sustainability.

This is a glossary of environmental science.

Sustainability metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, and attempt to quantify beyond the generic concept. Though there are disagreements among those from different disciplines, these disciplines and international organizations have each offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.

In environmental science, a population "overshoots" its local carrying capacity — the capacity of the biome to feed and sustain that population — when that population has not only begun to outstrip its food supply in excess of regeneration, but actually shot past that point, setting up a potentially catastrophic crash of that feeder population once its food populations have been consumed completely. Overshoot can apply to human overpopulation as well as other animal populations: any life-form that consumes others to sustain itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earth Overshoot Day</span> Calculated calendar date when humanitys yearly consumption exceeds Earths replenishment

Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. The term "overshoot" represents the level by which human population's demand overshoots the sustainable amount of biological resources regenerated on Earth. When viewed through an economic perspective, the annual EOD represents the day by which the planet's annual regenerative budget is spent, and humanity enters environmental deficit spending. EOD is calculated by dividing the world biocapacity, by the world ecological footprint, and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global Footprint Network</span> Ecological organization

The Global Footprint Network was founded in 2003 and is an independent think tank originally based in the United States, Belgium and Switzerland. It was established as a charitable not-for-profit organization in each of those three countries. Its aim is to develop and promote tools for advancing sustainability, including the ecological footprint and biocapacity, which measure the amount of resources we use and how much we have. These tools aim at bringing ecological limits to the center of decision-making.

Land footprint is the real amount of land, wherever it is in the world, that is needed to produce a product, or used by an organisation or by a nation.

The Ten Million Club Foundation is a non-governmental organization based in the Netherlands which promotes global overpopulation awareness. For the Netherlands, it advocates to match the population size with the carrying capacity of the area. Initially, the foundation was calling for a shrinking population; later on the emphasis was also put on a reduction of the ecological footprint of the inhabitants of the Netherlands. The club was set up as a private foundation by the Dutch historian Paul Gerbrands in 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sustainable population</span> Proposed sustainable human population of Earth

Sustainable population refers to a proposed sustainable human population of Earth or a particular region of Earth, such as a nation or continent. Estimates vary widely, with estimates based on different figures ranging from 0.65 billion people to 9.8 billion, with 8 billion people being a typical estimate. Projections of population growth, evaluations of overconsumption and associated human pressures on the environment have led to some to advocate for what they consider a sustainable population. Proposed policy solutions vary, including sustainable development, female education, family planning and broad human population planning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecological overshoot</span> Demands on ecosystem exceeding regeneration

Ecological overshoot is the phenomenon which occurs when the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity. Global ecological overshoot occurs when the demands made by humanity exceed what the biosphere of Earth can provide through its capacity for renewal.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Frequently Asked Questions". Global Footprint Network: Advancing the Science of Sustainability. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  2. ↑ Yue, Dongxia; Guo, Jianjun; Hui, Cang (2013). "Scale dependency of biocapacity and the fallacy of unsustainable development". Journal of Environmental Management. 126: 13–19. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2013.04.022. hdl: 10019.1/118295 . PMID   23648317.
  3. ↑ "Ecological Wealth of Nations: Earth's Biocapacity as a new framework for International Cooperation". Archived from the original on 2012-05-06. Retrieved 2011-12-21.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "What does ecological overshoot mean?". World Wildlife Fund. WWF. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  5. 1 2 "Natures regenerative capacity". World Wildlife Fund. WWF. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  6. ↑ Venetoulis, Jason; Talberth, John (5 January 2007). "Refining the ecological footprint". Environment, Development and Sustainability. 10 (4): 441–469. doi:10.1007/s10668-006-9074-z. S2CID   153900117.
  7. ↑ "Open Data Platform".
  8. ↑ Blomqvist, Linus; Brook, Barry W.; Ellis, Erle C.; Kareiva, Peter M.; Nordhaus, Ted; Shellenberger, Michael (2013). "Does the Shoe Fit? Real versus Imagined Ecological Footprints". PLOS Biology. PLOS biology journal. 11 (11): e1001700. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001700 . PMC   3818165 . PMID   24223517.
  9. ↑ Hayden, Anders (December 30, 2013). "ecological footprint (EF)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  10. 1 2 Hopton, Matthew E.; White, Denis (2012). "A simplified ecological footprint at a regional scale". Journal of Environmental Management. 111: 279–286. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.07.005. PMID   22033065.
  11. ↑ "Bioresources, Biocapacity of Ecosystems, and related terms". Michel Serres Institute: for resources and public goods. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  12. ↑ Ünal, Huseyin; Aktuğ, Muhammet (11 February 2022). "The impact of human capital and bio-capacity on the environmental quality: evidence from G20 countries". Environ Sci Pollut Res. 29 (30): 45635–45645. doi:10.1007/s11356-022-19122-0. PMID   35149945. S2CID   246752753 . Retrieved 29 April 2023.

Other resources

Videos

Finding Australia’s biocapacity Dr Mathis Wackernagel explains biocapacity and how it’s calculated.
Ecological Balance Sheets for 180+ Countries Global Footprint Network

Peer-reviewed Articles

The importance of resource security for poverty eradication;
Defying the Footprint Oracle: Implications of Country Resource Trends

Data

Results from the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.