Examples of impact of Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts

These are some examples of how National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity accounts have been used.

  • Mainstream adaptation: Ecological Footprint accounts and their statistics have become a standard in sustainability discussions and part of everyday vocabulary (‘footprint’).
  • Policy influence: Country Footprint results are included in the World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Report (2018, 2019) as a context indicator.  The IMD is using both the Ecological Footprint and Ecological balance as indicator inputs for their competitiveness ranking (2025). They have been cited by heads of state, and prominent voices such as Pope Francis and Greta Thunberg. The metric has been used as a CBD indicator, featured in WWF’s Living Planet Reports (2000 to 2022), national government programs, and the European Environment Agency (Ecological Footprint results for Europe).
  • Academic impact: Google Scholar lists over 236,000 articles referencing “ecological footprint,” including 14,400 in the first 10 months of 2025
  • Global reach: Through initiatives like Earth Overshoot Day, the concept generates over 7 billion media impressions annually, highlighting the implications of global overshoot.
  • Focus on essentials: Helped keep the focus of sustainability debate on its essence: that ultimately, a necessary condition for sustaining the diversity of life on this planet, and securing a resilient existence for humanity, depends on living within the regenerative budget of our planet.