Cálculo de la huella ecológica en Colombia a partir de la comparación del plan nutricional omnívoro vs. el vegetariano

Abstract

The climate change has taken the man to rethink his life style, one of the important aspects to replace is the feeding. A change on the consumption of animal protein to vegetable protein can bring representative environmental consequences to the country from the point of view of the Ecological footprint (EF). This is a sustainability indicator in charge to measure the impact generate by the human consumption over the planet. His calculation is made by the division of the annual consumption over the production of each food that make up the diet. Finally, the summation of every single Ecological Footprint given by the food to make a single EF for the diet. This result is compared with the biocapacity, on his definition is surface biologically productive, where are integrate the water aspects, polluting aspect (CO2 absorption), as the important ones. A sensitivity study shows the biocapacity needed to regenerate the reusable sources usedfrom the approach of two different diets, a vegetarian diet and omnivore diet, this two where used in 4 different studies to make the comparition of each EF. In conclusion, the study shows that Colombia does not have the environmental capacity to supply the food demand needed by the proposed diets, because is a country with much of this nutritional development based on the animal protein production.