The Ecological Footprint for pan-Europe (1) has been increasing almost constantly since 1961, while Europe's biocapacity (2) has decreased. This results in an ever larger deficit, with negative consequences for the environment within and outside Europe. (1) For this analysis, data from all European countries were used, except for nations that were excluded because of insufficient population (Cyprus, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Malta) and nations for which data are lacking (Andorra, Monaco, San Marino). (2) The capacity of ecosystems to produce useful biological materials and to absorb waste materials generated by humans, using current management schemes and extraction technologies.
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Ecological Footprint of European countries
The ecological footprint translates a few of the global pressures caused directly and indirectly by a country’s consumption into direct and virtual land use worldwide. This includes direct land use in the country for urban areas and roads, land used indirectly globally for the production of food, fibre, timber, energy consumed in the country, and finally ‘virtual’ land in the form of average forest that would be required to absorb CO2 emissions from the country’s use of fossil fuels thus avoiding accumulation in the atmosphere. A nation or a region’s footprint can be benchmarked against the area of land, or biocapacity available globally per person, giving a useful indication of the extent to which its consumption is environmentally sustainable. The biocapacity of a given piece of land is a function of its physical area, a factor that takes account of the type of land cover, and a yield factor varying according to local conditions.
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