Ecological footprint as an indicator for regional sustainable development : Turkey, Bursa, Kadıdöy

Abstract

Sustainable development is constantly gaining ground among the methods which measure whether an area is developing in a sustainable way, with ecological footprint to be the major index for assessing of the sustainability of a region. As Turkey constitutes one of the major rising economies; this study calculates and analyzes its ecological footprint both with them of Bursa and Kadikoy. Bursa is both a rural and provincial city among the most developed regions of Turkey while Kadikoy is one of the most crowded rural counties. These similar and contradicting characteristics of both places were the reasons for their choice in this study. In 2002, the per capita ecological footprint of Turkey was 5.78 gha and by 2011 it increased to 6.59 gha while that of Bursa in 2011 was 3.49 gha. Additionally, the ecological deficit of Turkey worsened, as from 3.78 gha in 2002 it increased to 4.81 gha in 2011. Simultaneously the ecological deficit of Bursa was again lower than that of the whole Turkey reaching 1.69 gha in 2011. Moreover, the per capita carbon ecological footprint of Kadikoy reached the 2.362 gha being the highest compared to the respective ones of Turkey and Bursa. Finally, from the ecoefficiency calculation it is inferred that its performance noted an overall improvement during that period, but again that of Bursa was higher by 1149 US $.