Thursday, August 9, 2007

PS 70-208: Ecological footprint calculation for a  college campus in southern India

Deeptha V. Thattai, Roshni Muralidharan, and Karthick Anand. SRM University

The indiscriminate use of renewable resources has led to large-scale use and misuse of land and water by humans. More harm is done to the Earth because of this resource use. The ecological footprint is a resource management tool that measures, in terms of equivalent area (global hectares, gha), how much land and water a given population requires not only for its current lifestyle but also to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes. Calculation of the ecological footprint gives us an idea about our sustainable practices and where to go from the present situation. It has been done for a few cities and even countries around the world. Here, we determine the ecological footprint of the engineering campus of SRM University, which is located in southern India. The ecological footprint of India as a whole is only 0.8 gha compared to that of developed countries (USA 9.6, UK 5.6). But this is not something to rest on because given the fast pace of development in India in the last few years, the footprints of urban and rural India are sure to vary widely. Thus, knowing the footprint of the campus will help in planning for a sustainable future. Data from various sources of resource use such as electricity, food, transportation, and water were collected.  These were used to calculate individual footprints as specified in literature. The total electricity consumed in SRM campus per year results in an equivalent of 527 gha. Similarly, an ecological footprint of 75 gha was calculated for transportation use. As for water, an equivalent of 6.4 gha is needed. Further calculations will be completed and per capita footprint calculated for the SRM campus. This will be compared against other footprint data.

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