Enable communities to minimizes their ecological footprint

Enable communities to minimizes their ecological footprint

Cities consume significant quantities of resources and have a major impact ap3500 on the environment, well beyond what they can handle within their borders. These unquestionable trends need to be substantially curbed and eventually reversed. ap431 One way of describing the impact of a city is to measure its ecological footprint. The ecological footprint of a city is a measure of the 'load' on nature imposed by meeting the needs apc2010 of its population. It represents the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption and waste discharged by that population. Reducing the ecological footprint of a city is a positive contribution apm4546 towards sustainability. Like any living system, a community consumes material, water and energy inputs, processes them into usable forms and generates wastes. This is the 'metabolism' of the city and making this metabolism more efficient apw7120 is essential to reducing the city's ecological footprint. In reducing the footprint, problems should be solved locally where possible, rather than shifting them to other geographic locations or future generations.