Assessing Dhaka's Environmental Sustainability Through Ecological Footprint: A Case Study of Dhanmondi Residential Area, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Ecological Footprint assessment helps to identify what activities are having the biggest impact on nature and opens up possibilities to reduce our impact and live within the means of One Planet. It provides measurement of collective consumption of the population whether they are exceeding the Earth’s ecological limits or not. The introduction of Ecological Footprint has been very necessary for the context of Bangladesh especially in Dhaka as the endless demand and the unplanned consumption pattern of the population here have been producing a very unsustainable situation. Thus this study intends to initiate it by calculating the Ecological Footprint of Dhanmondi Residential Area, one of the major consuming areas of Dhaka city as a sustainability indicator. A blending of Component and Direct method has been used to derive the Ecological Footprint of Dhanmondi Residential Area. Questionnaire survey has been conducted to gather information about consumption pattern for different components in the households of Dhanmondi Residential Area. The Biocapacity of Dhanmondi Residential Area is also measured from the bioproductive lands available in the area. Following the generated results, sustainability analysis has been done for the study. An enormous gap between demand and supply of natural resources has been observed from the scrutiny. The study also identified consumption of Natural Gas for household purpose as the most contributing factor in the footprint of Dhanmondi Residential Area followed by Electricity, Food and Transportation.

Keywords: Ecological Footprint, Biocapacity, Environmental Sustainability, Carbon Footprint, Dhanmondi Residential Area, Dhaka, Natural Gas Consumption, Ecological Overshoot, Bangladesh