Ecological footprint as an ecosystem natural capital indicator
Journal Title: Екологічні науки - Year 2018, Vol 20, Issue 1
Abstract
For many years, humanity’s demand for natural resources – the environmental footprint – exceeded the Earth’s ability to recover or its biological capacity. Ukraine is among the few countries where a large amount of biological capacity allows not only to satisfy the demand of the country’s population, but also to provide trade partners with it. If our country succeeds in maintaining this advantage, the economic situation in the face of a global shortage of resources and ecosystem services will be quite profitable for us. Nevertheless, even a sufficient amount of biological capacity in Ukraine can be threatened. Therefore, the account of the ecological footprint is an issue of relevance and requires not only a typical calculation of each element, but also the application of a real actions complex based on the results of calculations. In spite of the large number of studies on the environmental footprint record, they are related mainly to the criteria of human needs in the ecosystems of the planet, to a lesser extent – a certain city, but very rarely one can find the study of the ecological footprint for a particular region. Therefore, the definition of the ecological footprint for the consumption of the Dnipropetrovsk region is the goal of our study. To do this, the values of six elements of the ecological footprint: vegetable cultivation (Cl), pasture (Gl), fishery (Fg), forestry (F), energy (E) and infrastructure footprint (I) was calculated based on the information and analytical materials of the resources balance and the use of the most important types of products of industrial and technical purpose and consumer goods of the studied area. It was established that the overall ecological footprint per capita for the Dnipropetrovsk region is 4.446 ha/person, while food consumption is a significant driver of the ecological deficit in the region, where the demand for renewable resources and ecosystem services exceeds the ability of these ecosystems to provide them. Regarding the ecological deficit of energy resources, it is clear that Dnipropetrovsk region relies on the capacity of other regions or foreign countries to meet the demand of the population for energy.
Authors and Affiliations
О. В. Барабаш, Я. Ю. Вознюк
Keywords
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