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PHILIPSBURG - On SXMISLANDTIME I read - on Feb 19, 2010 - "BREAKING NEWS, The St. Maarten Chamber of Commerce and Industry will take legal action against GEBE.

The Chamber who will be representing the business community of St. Maarten will be present in court on the 8th of March 2010, seeking compensation for damages resulting from the numerous power outages that the community of St. Maarten has had to face over the past months."

For the past year I must admit that I am not a fan of GEBE. But in the midst of one of my latest research projects, I realized even more so how knowledge is truly power and human stupidity is the cause of so much human suffering. Without further ado I want to introduce two terms that will not only come to the defense of GEBE, they will actually point blame elsewhere as well.

Ecological Footprint & Biocapacity

The Ecological footprint (EF) is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It compares human demand with planet Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate.

It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle.

For 2006, humanity's total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.4 planet Earth's – in other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.4 times as fast as Earth can renew them. Every year, this number is recalculated – with a three year lag for the time is takes the United Nations to collect and publish all the underlying statistics. Source: Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint

Biocapacity (BC) measures the bioproductive supply that is available within a certain area (e.g. of arable land, pasture, forest, productive sea). EF and BC are equivalent to the concepts demand and supply in Economics and is also referred to as EF/BC accounting. When the EF (Demand) is Larger than the BC (Supply) the renewable resource accounting results in a deficit.

A national ecological deficit can be compensated through trade with nations that process ecological reserves or through liquidation of national ecological assets. In contrast, the global ecological deficit cannot be compensated through trade, and is therefore equal to overshoot. A country with ecological reserves can still experience a local deficit (Global Footprint Network 2006). Vice Versa, if the EF (Demand) is smaller than the BC (Supply), one speaks of an ecological reserve.

The EF decreases with smaller population size for a given area, less consumption per person, and higher resource efficiency (prevailing technology). Source: Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, working papers and studies, 2006 Edition, page 5.

Fundamentals of Ecological Footprint

The EF/BC accounting addresses a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustainable consumption: "Is human demand within the regenerative capacity of the planet?" The accounts are divided into two parts: demand on nature (or Ecological Footprint, EF) and the ecological supply (or biocapacity, BC).

It is a 'snapshot' estimate for a selected time period, which is normally one year. The resource use (built-up areas, the consumption of energy and renewable resources) is expressed in units of space. On the supply side, BC aggregates the production of various ecosystems in a certain area (e.g. of arable land, pasture, forest, or productive sea). Source: Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, working papers and studies, 2006 Edition, page 5.

Formulas

* Biocapacity (Capacity in global hectares per person) = Area x Bioproductivity
* Ecological Footprint (Demand in global hectares per person) = population x consumption per person x resource and waste intensity

Source: Ecologocal Footprint AtLas 2009, Global Footprint Network, Research And Standards Department, page 21.

The above objective was just to give a brief overview of some theoretical aspects before further developing the article. As this concept might seem complicated to some, part two will break down abovementioned in more layman terms.