Global hectare

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A global hectare is a measurement defining an area of global average productivity. It is becoming more frequently used in geographic, environmental, and sociological circles, as it relates both to ecological footprint, and global development.

The global hectare is a measurement of biocapacity of the entire earth - one global hectare is a measurement of the average biocapacity of all hectare measurements any biologically productive areas on the planet. If you take the sum of the world's biocapacity, then divide it by the number hectares on the earth's surface, you get the biocapacity of one average earth hectare. this is a global hectare. When the term 'global hectare per person' is used, it refers to the amount of biologically productive land and water available per person on the planet. eg. In 2003 there were 11.2 billion hectares of biologically productive land and water available^{[citation needed]} and 6.3 billion people on the planet. This makes 1.8 global hectares per person.^[1]

Global hectares vary from place to place. ie. in a lush area with high rainfall, a global hectare would be much smaller than in a semi-arid area, where the required area for the same biomass would be much larger, as dry conditions tends to limit plant growth and biodiversity.

[edit] uses

the Global Hectare is a useful measure of biocapacity, as is can convert things like Human dietary requirements into a physical area, and this can be used to show how many people a certain region of the earth can sustain with current technologies and agricultural methods. It can be used as a way of determining the relative carrying capacity of the earth.

It can also be used to show that different foods might mean that the earth could support different populations (i.e. meat generally requires more land, water, and energy use to produce a certain amount of food, than the equivalent vegetable food, hence a meat-based diet would require a less populated planet)