Arab Atlas of Footprint & Biocapacity
biocapacity in the region. Declines ranged from 17 percent in Lebanon to over 85 percent in Kuwait and Qatar.
water to biocapacity, or inversely the threat to biocapacity due to lack of fresh water, but it is clear that future water scarcity will place pressure on the biocapacity of Arab countries.
Egypt was the only country to increase its biocapacity per person, by about 20 percent, despite a nearly three-fold increase in the population of the country over the same time period. This increase in per capita biocapacity in Egypt was possible because the percentage increase in total biocapacity was higher than the percentage increase in population size. The rise in total biocapacity can be attributed primarily to increased agricultural productivity and the addition of more cropland areas achieved through increased irrigation and the application of modern, industrial farming methods, all of which tend to increase the Ecological Footprint. Therefore, in spite of the boost in Egypt’s per capita biocapacity, the country’s biocapacity deficit still increased due to a rapidly increasing Ecological Footprint.
In 2008, Arab countries were using more resources than their domestic biocapacity could renew, as indicated in Figure 8. Although the demand for resources by the region’s inhabitants is below the world’s average, the local availability of biocapacity per person is also low, partially as a result of the region’s arid conditions and high population growth. Up until 1980, the Ecological Footprint of Arab countries was still less than their biocapacity, on a per capita basis (Figure 8). In addition, the Arab region’s consumption of fossil fuel has been rising to meet the increased demand for electricity and desalinated water, which has added to the region’s footprint and biocapacity deficit and is expected to limit the region’s future options with rising populations and high local subsidies. The Arab region thus falls into the category of regions that are dependent on the import of external biocapacity.
Water is a significant production factor for biocapacity through its potential to increase the area of land under production or increase bioproductivity. Current data sets do not allow us yet to identify the specific contribution of
Arab countries had 5 percent of the world’s population and only 2.5 percent of total
Figure 5 | The Ecological Footprint per capita and population of major world regions, in 2008. The area of each block represents the total Ecological Footprint. The light grey area for the Arab region represents the values in 1961, which has grown in both per capita consumption and population as indicated by the white arrow
343.5
8 338.4
n North America n European Union n Other Europe
Ecological Footprint per Capita
6
n Middle East / Central Asia
497.1
n Latin America
239.3
4
n Asia-Pacific
= Arab Region
n Africa
577
383.7 3,729.6
2
976.3
0 0
1000
2000
3000
4000
Population in Millions
5000
6000
7000
19