Measuring the environmental impact: a case study using the ecological footprint approach

People depend on nature for the supply of food, energy and fibre, the absorption of waste products and other life-support services. If we are to continue to have good living conditions, we must ensure that nature's productivity isn't used more quickly than it can be renewed, and that waste isn't discharged more quickly than nature can absorb it. To find out whether nature provides enough resources to secure good living conditions, we need ecological accounting tool. The Task Force on Healthy and Sustainable Communities at the University of British Columbia has developed the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint is an accounting tool for ecological resources. Categories of consumption are translated into areas of productive land required to provide resources and assimilate waste products. The ecological footprint is a measure of how sustainable our life-styles are. This paper shows an application of this methodology. The european region I have chosen is located in the southern part of Italy and is named "Campania". The author has also developed an automatic tools that enable to manipulate the statistical data useful for the ecological footprint approach.