Correct option is A
The correct answer is (a).
Introduction
- The Ecological Footprint is a standardized metric of human demand on Earth's ecosystems.
- It is exclusively measured in a standardized unit called the 'Global Hectare' (gha), which represents a biologically productive hectare with world average biological productivity for a given year.
Information Booster
- The concept was developed in the early 1990s by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia.
- A Global Hectare normalizes the productivity of different land types (like forests, croplands, and oceans) to allow for a universally comparable metric.
- It measures the amount of biologically productive land and water area required to produce all the resources an individual or population consumes, and to absorb the waste they generate (especially carbon emissions).
- If a population's ecological footprint exceeds the region's biocapacity, it operates in an 'ecological deficit.'
- Currently, humanity's total ecological footprint far exceeds the Earth's total biocapacity, a situation termed 'ecological overshoot.'
- The introduction of this metric provided the first quantifiable accounting system to graphically demonstrate the limits of global sustainability to policymakers.
- Gallon per capita is a measure of liquid consumption (usually water or fuel) per person, but it does not account for land area or biological regeneration.
- Cubic meter is a standard unit of volume, used to measure spatial capacity or timber/water reserves, lacking the biological productivity normalization of the footprint concept.
- Man Hour is an economic metric of labor and productivity, entirely unrelated to ecological carrying capacity.
- The 'Limits to Growth' report (1972) foreshadowed the need for concepts like the Ecological Footprint by warning against infinite exponential economic growth on a finite planet.
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