Biocapacity

Biocapacity is an area’s capacity to produce a constant supply of renewable resources and to absorb waste arising from their consumption, taking into account the technology and resource management in place. A country’s estimated potential biocapacity is calculated by multiplying the average available productive surface area by average bioproductivity (bioproductivity/ha depends on the type of ecosystem and its management).

The Earth’s biocapacity is the sum of the capacities of all its biologically productive areas - meadows, prairies, forests, and fishing waters – available to supply human needs. Biocapacity is expressed in terms of global hectares (hag) per capita, with a global hectare defined as the average global capacity to produce resources and absorb waste products. When compared to human demand (the ecological footprint, also expressed in hag), an ecological deficit or surplus can be determined. One criticism of this indicator is that the biological productivity used for these calculations is maximum productivity, which does not sufficiently take biodiversity into account.

Average global biocapacity was 1.78 hag per capita in 2003. Around 60 countries have an above-average biocapacity, while most (90) are below-average. The greatest biocapacity is in Gabon (19.2 hag/capita), followed by Bolivia (15), New Zealand (14.9), Canada (14.5) and Australia (12.4). Of those countries with the largest populations, some noteworthy figures come from Brazil (9.9), Russia (6.9), the United States (4.7), Mexico (1.7), Indonesia (1), Nigeria (0.9), China (0.8), India (0.4), Pakistan and Bangladesh (0.3). Countries with extremely low biocapacity (0.3) include Afghanistan, Haiti, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Iraq is an extreme case, with near-nought biocapacity (0.03).

Definition of the indicator

Biocapacity = Land area X bioproductivity
Land area includes cultivated terrain, pastures, forests, and fishing regions
In calculating bioproductivity, for each country and each type of land area, a correction factor, the yield factor, is taken into account, namely: the factor by which a country’s average yield is greater or less than the world average.