Māris kļaviņŠ, azamat azizov, JĀnis zaļoksnis environment, pollution, development: the case of uzbekistan

298 
ENVIRONMENT, POLLUTION, DEVELOPMENT:  THE CASE OF UZBEKISTAN
 12.5. 
 Ecological footprint
1
To satisfy human needs for goods and services, the use of natural 
resources creates environ mental pollution and waste. Ecological 
footprint is an indicator of sustainable lifestyle which shows how 
much land is required to satisfy people’s needs.
Mathis Wackernagel, one of the author’s of the ecological foot-
print  concept,  defines  it  as  the  area  of  land  and  water,  converted 
into hectares, necessary to produce the products that an individual 
or a population, or an activity has consumed and to absorb the 
pollu tion formed in the life cycle of the products, using the existing 
techno logies and experience of resource management. For example, 
the ecological footprint of a given country is the total land area 
in hectares that is necessary to produce food, goods and services 
consumed by its population and to absorb waste and pollution 
that have arisen in the full life cycle of these goods. The ecological 
footprint allows to measure and analyse the consumption of natural 
resources, volume of created waste and regenerative capacity of 
nature. Unlike other indicators (of impact on the environ ment), the 
ecological footprint also shows the pressure on the environ ment that 
our consumption causes in other countries, because the pressure on 
the environ ment from producing imported goods is in the country of 
origin.
People consume resources and ecosystem services from different 
countries of the world, and their ecological footprint is the totality 
of these territories irrespective of their whereabouts. The map shows 
territories of countries by their ecological footprints in proportion to 
the total world ecological footprint. The largest ecological footprints 
are  those  of  the  USA,  China  and  India.  However,  the  largest 
1 
At preparation of this chapter contribution of J. Brizga is acknowledged.