Every country either draws more from nature than its ecosystems can regenerate, or holds a reserve. This map tracks that balance across 130 countries.
National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, 2025. Countries in grey have insufficient or inconclusive data. Source: Global Footprint Network National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, via the Open Data Platform.
The Ecological Footprint converts human demand on nature into a single unit: the global hectare, a hectare of land or sea with world-average biological productivity. Biocapacity converts ecosystems’ regenerative capacity into the same unit.
Expressing both in the same currency allows a direct comparison. Where footprint exceeds biocapacity, a country runs an ecological deficit, met either by importing, by depleting its own stocks, or by using the global commons as a carbon sink. Where biocapacity exceeds footprint, it holds a reserve.
The accounts cover six land types — cropland, grazing land, forest, fishing grounds, built-up land, and the forest area required to absorb carbon emissions. That last component dominates: for most industrialised countries, the carbon footprint is over half the total.
Per-person and total tell different stories. A country with a small population and modest per-person footprint may still hold a large reserve. Use the metric buttons above the map to switch.
Deficit is not the same as harm. A country may run a deficit sustainably by importing from countries with reserves. What matters globally is the aggregate: humanity’s total footprint exceeds Earth’s biocapacity, and no amount of trade resolves that.
The carbon component drives most deficits. For most high-income countries, reducing the footprint means reducing emissions rather than changing land use.
National averages conceal regional variation. A country with adequate biocapacity overall may have regions in severe deficit.
Data from the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, produced by the Global Footprint Network and York University. Figures on this page update automatically each month from the Footprint Network API.
The accounts are recalculated annually as underlying UN datasets are revised, so historical values can shift between editions.