Box 1.1 (continued)
EF ¼ Ecological Footprint
EFA ¼ Ecological Footprint Analysis
EF C ¼ Ecological Footprint of Consumption
EF P ¼ Ecological Footprint of Production
EQF ¼ Equivalence Factor(s)
FAO ¼ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FAOSTAT ¼ Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical
Database
GAEZ ¼ Global Agro-Ecological Zones
GFN ¼ Global Footprint Network
GHG ¼ Greenhouse Gas(es)
gha ¼ Global hectare
ha ¼ Hectare
IEA ¼ International Energy Agency (Paris, France)
IPCC ¼ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IYF ¼ Intertemporal Yield Factor(s)
NFA ¼ National Footprint Accounts
NPP ¼ Net Primary Production
t C ¼ Tonne Carbon
UN COMTRADE ¼ United Nations International Trade Statistics Database
wha ¼ World average hectare
Source: Lin et al. (2019, p iv)
The Ecological Footprint and biocapacity accounting has been approached
recently from a stock-flow perspective (Mancini et al. 2017, p 127). New definitions
have been derived from this endeavour, as follows:
• Biocapacity – ‘world-average hectare-equivalents (a stock-equivalent measure)
that are available to provide the amount of ecosystem service flows actually
regenerated by the biosphere every year’.
• Ecological Footprint – the ‘hectare-equivalent units that are or would be needed
to produce, in a year, the amount of ecosystem service flows humans actually use
in that year’.
Given these new definitions, global hectares acquire a different meaning:
• Global hectares (gha) – are (still) not a measure of land use, but rather measure
the inherent capacity of biosphere assets to produce useful biomass and services
for appropriation by humans.
6
1 Introduction