Ecological footprint of Solan district, Himachal Pradesh, India

Abstract

Unsustainable resource use on earth must be addressed from a variety of perspectives and at multiple levels of governance. Understanding the environmental consequences of urban-dwellers will become increasingly important as the human population urbanizes. Having access to reliable, cross-cutting, quantitative city-level sustainability measures is crucial. By taking into account local facts, scientific analyses can assist in providing solutions. Emergence analysis, material flow analysis, data development analysis and ecological footprint analysis (EFA) are only some of the assessment methodologies that have been offered. EFA has been used to assess urban sustainability in a number of cities as a useful analytical and planning tool. The purpose of this study is to assess the sustainability of Solan district, Himachal Pradesh, India, using four EFA components: crop land, grazing land, forest land and infrastructure land footprints. According to the study, the total ecological footprint of Solan district is 6865.30 gha, and its components are in the following order: crop land footprint (3287.40 gha) > infrastructure land footprint (2088.21 gha) > grazing land footprint (978.03 gha) > forest land footprint (511.67 gha).