Mentor’s comment

• In the intro define the term carrying capacity of an ecology.
• In the body explain why taking into account the carrying capacity of the ecosystems matters. It can warn us about the impending crisis in the ecosystem, it can help in efforts to reduce the degradation of the environment, it also helps reduce the risk of natural disasters if it is taken into account while planning in the area for development work.
• In the conclusion state what needs to be done to reduce the damage to the environment.

Answer:

Ecological debt refers to the consumption of resources from within an ecosystem that exceeds the system’s regenerative capacity. This is the overall depletion of the Global resources beyond the Earth’s ability to regenerate them. The term is closely related to the Carrying Capacity.

Carrying Capacity as relevant to an environment:

• There is a certain carrying capacity of the environment. 
• The concept of “carrying capacity” addresses the question as to how many people can be permitted into any area without the risk of degrading the environment there.
• Carrying capacity means that the total population of an area is able to support given the quality of the natural environment and the prevailing technology available. 
• It is the population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment. 
• A simple example of carrying capacity is the number of people who could survive in a lifeboat after a shipwreck. Their survival depends on how much food and water they have, how much each person eats and drinks each day, and how many days they are afloat.
• When the rate of extraction of resources exceeds the rate of their regeneration, the environment fails to perform its activities. 
• The resulting phenomenon is called environmental degradation. 

Carrying Capacity and Sustainable Development of a region:

• Sustainable development means the development of a sustainable environment, one that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs.
• Presently, worldwide the total human ecological footprint is almost 1.5 times the total worldwide carrying capacity. It means we are living on the capital of the planet rather than its income
• So, in the context of sustainability, carrying capacity is the size of the population that can be supported indefinitely upon the available resources and services of supporting natural, social, human, and built capital.
• The central goal of sustainable development is to achieve effective and efficient use of resources and prevention of degradable spatial quality which are essential in sustainable development and environmental management to providing the desired array of quality of life to humanity in return. 
• The tasks of planners and other professionals in the built environment in this changing world, therefore, requires an in-depth understanding of carrying capacity and its application to keep a balance between the built environment and natural environment in solving the challenges associated with burgeoning population and urbanization. 
• However, the application of the carrying capacity concept enables planners to determine the optimum population that can be supported within a given area with adequate infrastructure facilities so that development is environmentally hazard-free and sustainable.
• The conditions of most urban roads in various metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, etc suggests that their carrying capacities have exceeded what they were designed to carry. There is too much pressure on the road network. 
• Lands that were supposed to be used as green areas, open spaces, buffer zones, etc, have been converted to residential, commercial or even industrial uses as a result of the pressure of overpopulation on land. 
• The destruction of natural habitats for paved land uses, capacity augmentation through densification/ infilling has made the environment to be vulnerable to all manners of environmental catastrophes such as flooding, erosion, degradation, pollution, etc.

Way Forward:

• For stakeholders to achieve a sustainable environment, traditional approaches that mainly focus on supplying physical facilities need to be shifted towards a more practical method of incorporating the concept of carrying capacity into managing the regions. 
• Since the earth’s finite resources are being gradually abused by the increasing number of earth’s inhabitants, the professionals in the built environment should try and enforce the ethics of their professions towards best practices in the world. 
• There should be an invocation of sanctions to everybody who defies existing standards and regulations on best practices. Negative and positive sanctions should be introduced to ensure the judicious use of the planet’s capital assets. 
• For example, while prizes like national awards are being given to willing compliance with environmental planning standards, defaulters should be sent to jail without the option of fines. 
• Secondly, mass enlightenment towards the dire implication of carrying capacity should be provided to the people through the medium of all national agencies and media houses. 
• And finally, the organization of seminars and conferences in the domain of all professionals should key into carrying capacity awareness, among others

While relating the concept of carrying capacity to sustainable development, the concept has become bedrock which all the stakeholders can make use of to examine not only what is environmentally and economically feasible, but what is socially, politically and legally acceptable in today’s world.