Ecological Deficit is the level of resource consumption and waste

Waste

Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...

 discharge by a population in excess of locally sustainable natural

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

 production and assimilative capacity

Assimilative capacity

Assimilative capacity refers to the ability of a body of water to cleanse itself; its capacity toreceive waste waters or toxic materials without deleterious effects and without damage toaquatic life or humans who consume the water....

. In spatial terms, the ecological deficit is the difference between that species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 population's effective ecological footprint

Ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to...

 and the geographic area it actually occupies. It basically promotes overall resource efficiency

Efficiency

Efficiency in general describes the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose. It is often used with the specific purpose of relaying the capability of a specific application of effort to produce a specific outcome effectively with a minimum amount or quantity of...

 to reduce our Footprint.

See also

• Carrying capacity
  Carrying capacity
  The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
  
  
• Ecological debt
  Ecological debt
  Ecological debt is a term used since 1992 by some environmental organizations from the South. The first one to use this term was the Instituto de Ecologia Politica from Chile . J.M. Borrero, from Colombia, a lawyer, wrote a book on the ecological debt in 1994...
  
  
• Greenhouse debt
  Greenhouse debt
  Greenhouse debt or carbon debt is the measure to which an individual person, incorporated association, business enterprise, government instrumentality or geographic community exceeds its permitted greenhouse footprint and contributes greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and climate...
  
  
• Material efficiency
  Material efficiency
  Material efficiency is a description or metric which expresses the degree in which usage of raw materials, construction projects or physical processes are used or carried out in a manner which consumes, incorporates, or wastes less of a given material compared to previous measures...
  
  
• Natural capital
  Natural capital
  Natural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital to goods and services relating to the natural environment. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future...