Ecological Footprint课件.ppt

Ecological Footprint 精品文档  Ecological Footprint measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes under prevailing technology That is, it measures the extent to which humanity is using natures resources faster than they can regenerate 精品文档 So Where are We At? The footprint is a resource accounting tool that can help us plan for a world in which we all live well, within the means of our one planet But today, humanitys Ecological Footprint is over 23% larger than what the planet can regenerate It now takes more than one year and two months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year 精品文档 Ecological Overshoot When humanitys ecological resource demands exceed what nature can supply, we reach ecological overshoot The effects: collapsing fisheries, carbon-induced climate change, species extinction, deforestation, and the loss of groundwater The human footprint has more than tripled since 1960 精品文档 Humanitys Footprint 1961-2003 How many Earths were needed to meet the resource requirements of humanity for each year? Ratio between resource demand Biocapacity Demand = population times per capita consumption Biocapacity = 1planet 精品文档 World EcologicalFootprint 精品文档 Components of the Worlds Average per Person 精品文档 Some Definitions CO2 is carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas CO2-e is the equivalent in CO2 of all greenhouse gasses including methane and fluorocarbons Bts is the weight of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere as billion tonnes metric ppm is the ratio of the number of greenhouse gas molecules to the total number of ?molecules of dry air as parts per million IPCC is the UN International Panel on Climate Change 精品文档 Predictions Recent research shows that there is a ten percent risk that we will pass an irreversible tipping point in the next five years Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere now stand at around 430ppm CO2-e, compar