Ecological and water footprints in India

Environment   Aug 23, 2017 by Sai Rithvik

Ecological footprint:

The ecological footprint measures human demand on nature, i.e., the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. 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 or the world (biocapacity). In short, it is a measure of human impact on Earth's ecosystem and reveals the dependence of the human economy on natural capital.

The ecological footprint is defined as the biologically productive area needed to provide for everything people use: fruits and vegetables, fish, wood, fibers, absorption of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use, and space for buildings and roads. Biocapacity is the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature.

Footprint and biocapacity can be compared at the individual, regional, national or global scale. Both footprint and biocapacity change every year with number of people, per person consumption, efficiency of production, and productivity of ecosystems.At a global scale, footprint assessments show how big humanity's demand is compared to what planet Earth can renew.

The following picture shows India's footprint vs biocapacity graph upto the year 2012:

As we can see India, in its way to becoming a superpower,has a huge ecological footprint compared to its biocapacity. It is in a huge ecological deficit compared to the rest of the world.

My personal Earth overshoot day is MARCH 31 , and if everyone lived like I am right now , we would need 4.1 earths.

Water footprint:

The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in water volume consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time. A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g., an individual, family, village, city, province, state or nation) or producers (e.g., a public organization, private enterprise or economic sector). The water footprint is a geographically explicit indicator, not only showing volumes of water use and pollution, but also the locations.

The water footprint allows us to answer a broad range of questions for companies, governments and individuals. For example:

• Where is the water dependence in my company’s operations or supply chain?

• How well are regulations protecting our water resources?

• How secure are our food or energy supplies?

• Can I do something to reduce my own water footprint and help us manage water for both people and nature?

The water footprint of a country is related to what its people eat. For example, it is a common thought that the water involved in a cup of coffee is just the water in the cup. There is actually 140 litres of water involved. The 140 litres of water is the amount of water that was used to grow, produce, package, and ship the coffee beans. A hamburger needs an estimated 2,400 litres of water. This hidden water is technically called virtual water. Therefore, eating a lot of meat means a large water footprint. However, care is needed to avoid misunderstanding the significance of water footprints of food. 

There are three types  of water footprints:

blue water footprint:

The blue water footprint is the volume of freshwater that evaporated from the global blue water resources (surface water and ground water) to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community (either lost through evapotranspiration, incorporated in products or transferred to non-blue catchments).

green water footprint:

The green water footprint is the volume of water evaporated from the global green water resources (rainwater stored in the soil as soil moisture) during production or those incorporated in products.

grey water footprint:

The grey water footprint is the volume of polluted water that associates with the production of all goods and services for the individual or community. The latter can be estimated as the volume of water that is required to dilute pollutants to such an extent that the quality of the water remains at or above agreed water quality standards

My personal water footprint is 539m³.

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