Biocapacity

The biocapacity or biological capacity of an ecosystem is an estimate of its production of certain biological materials such as natural resources, and its absorption and filtering of other materials such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. “Useful biological materials” are defined as those demanded by the human economy.

Biological capacity available per person (or per capita): There were 12 billion hectares of biologically productive land and water on this planet in 2008. Dividing by the number of people alive in that year, 6.7 billion, gives 1.8 global hectares per person . This assumes that no land is set aside for other species that consume the same biological material as humans.

An increase in global population can result in a decrease in biocapacity. This is usually due to the fact that the Earth’s resources have to be shared; therefore, there becomes little to supply the increasing demand of the increasing population. Currently, this issue can be resolved by outsourcing. However, resources will run out due to the increasing demands and as a result a collapse of an ecosystem can be the consequence of such actions. When the ecological footprint becomes greater than the biocapacity of the population, a biocapacity deficit is suspected. 'Global biocapacity' is a term sometimes used to describe the total capacity of an ecosystem to support various continuous activity and changes. When the ecological footprint of a population exceeds the biocapacity of the environment it lives in, this can be called an 'ecological overshoot'. A 2008 report stated that people were using an equivalence of 1.5 Earths to compensate for their needs. However other sources have suggested that depletion of cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land is not occurring on an aggregate, global level. Hence, virtually all of the ecological overshoot comes from the measure of the rate at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere. Additional stresses of greenhouse gases, climate change, and ocean acidification can also aggravate the problem. In reference to the definition of biocapacity: 1.5 Earths means renewable resources will eventually result in depletion because they are being produced faster and more often than the resources can be re-grown. Therefore, it will one year and six months for the resources we use to be able to regenerate again and in addition absorb all the waste we manufactured as well. So instead of taking one year, we are now in-taking enough resources that should last us one year and six months.

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