Existing Reap Users

Indicators

A tourism impact indicator needs to take into account the full consequences of tourism regardless of where the impact is felt. The ecological footprint (EF) is one such indicator which works to estimate the full "resource consumption and waste assimilation requirements of a defined human population or economy." The EF is measured in terms of the resources (corresponding bioproductive land area) required to provide the goods and services consumed. If this exceeds what is available then the rate of consumption is unsustainable.   

For example the EF associated with a hotel could include the actual land area of the hotel itself, plus a calculation of the resources required to: build and set up; maintain the hotel; run it through heating, lighting, powering and cleaning. If the hotel provides guests with food, there will also be the land area associated with growing, storing, processing and transporting meat, cereals, fruits and vegetables. 

One key benefit of the EF is that it describes a finite limit to resource use. We only have one earth with a finite area of biologically productive land measured in global hectares (gha). The total bioproductive land area can be divided by the world's population to reveal a global ‘fair share' identified by WWF in 2006 as 1.8 gha. This 1.8 gha is the average amount of land a global citizen has for provision of food, materials, energy and waste absorption each year and includes their travel and tourism activity. 

Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has developed a methodology to construct complete footprint calculations for the Ecological Footprint. The methodology also allows the carbon dioxide emissions caused both directly and indirectly by an activity or accumulated over the life stages of a product, to be calculated and assigned. This is known as a carbon footprint.