A bottom-up approach towards the assessment of ecological footprints and biocapacity

The concept of ecological footprint (EF) assessment embeds into the broader concept of sustainable development, relating directly to quality of life and maintaining the natural constraints of the global ecosystem. EFs relate to the balance between the Earth's biocapacity and consumption, measured as land equivalence in global hectares per capita. The majority of studies relating to EF assessments have adopted a top-down methodology in order to assess national and regional EFs. Furthermore, these studies are mainly based upon national accounts of input, output and trade; information which is readily available for most countries, and the EFs usually require an assessment of equivalent land area per capita to maintain the current levels of consumption. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the EF methodology has been refined and has been widely adopted by many countries and governments as a tool to measure biocapacity, or, the consumption of resources. In this paper, we present a bottom-up methodology to measure the EF of a rural region (near Chennai) in southern India. Advantages and limitations of this approach are then discussed through comparisons with regional and national assessments.