4.3 - Carrying Capacity

Question 1

How can resources be classed?

Answer 1

• as natural or human
• traditional distinction between renewable + non-renewable

Question 2

How are renewable resources viewed as?

Answer 2

• critical or non-critical

Question 3

What is non-renewable resources relevant to?

Answer 3

• fuel + non-fuel minerals

Question 4

What has had a phenomenal impact on the planet’s resources + natural envi.?

Answer 4

• huge growth of global economy
• many resources running out + waste sinks becoming full
• remaining natural world can no longer support global economy

Question 5

What does climate change have an impact on?

Answer 5

• essential resources: inc. comp. between countries for resources

Question 6

What is the ecological footprint?

Answer 6

• an indicator of sustainability, which expresses relationship between pop + natural envi.
• a measure of the use of natural resources by a country’s pop

Question 7

What is the ecological footprint concepts used for?

Answer 7

• measuring natural resource consumption
• how it varies between countries
• how it’s changed over time

Question 8

What are the 6 components of the ecological footprint?

Answer 8

• built-up land
• fishing grounds
• forest
• grazing land
• carbon footprint
• cropland

Question 9

What is no longer a component of the ecological footprint?

Answer 9

• electricity generated by nuclear power plants
• due to risk + demands of nuclear power not easily expressed in terms of biocapacity

Question 10

What is biocapacity?

Answer 10

• capacity of an area or ecosystem to generate an ongoing supply of resources + to absorb its wastes

Question 11

What is ecological footprint measured in?

Answer 11

• global hectares

Question 12

What is a global hectare?

Answer 12

• 1 hectare of biologically productive space w world average productivity

Question 13

Who calculates footprint + biocapacity for individual countries annually?

Answer 13

• Global Footprint Network

Question 14

What is the ecological footprint influences by?

Answer 14

• size of a country’s pop
• level of demand for goods + services in a country
• how demand is met in terms of envi. impact

Question 15

What has been an important factor in the growth of humanity’s total ecological footprint?

Answer 15

• the expansion of world trade

Question 16

What helps manage ecological assets?

Answer 16

• knowing extent of human pressure on natural envi.

Question 17

What is the result of an inc. global excess of the ecological footprint?

Answer 17

• run down ecosystems
• waste accumulating in air, water + land

Question 18

What is putting the future dev. at risk?

Answer 18

• deforestation
• water shortages
• dec. biodiversity
• climate change

Question 19

What is a carbon footprint?

Answer 19

• total set of GHG emissions caused directly + indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product

Question 20

What is overshoot?

Answer 20

• when humanity’s demand on nature exceeds biosphere’s supply, or regenerative capacity

Question 21

since when had humanity been in ecological overshoot?

Answer 21

• since mid-1980s