Inspired by the definition and the methodology of the Ecological Footprint, a synthetic indicator of environmental sustainability, this study introduces two different categories of analysis, that concern the global-local spatial scale of ecosystems and their active-passive role. These two categories allow us to better analyse the definition and the formalism of the Ecological Footprint and lead to the definition of a new indicator, for which we propose the name Ecological Burden. Its formulation is parallel to that of the Ecological Footprint, but contains complementary information: the Ecological Footprint takes into account the use of natural services caused by consumption, while the Ecological Burden quantifies the natural services centring the budget on production. The former measure estimates the degree of responsibility that a population incurs by using the global natural capital, while the latter indicator concerns the local environmental impact and the "health" of the local environment and is therefore more directly connected with the dimension of the well-being of the local population. The paper discusses the limits and possible applications of these two indicators to improve the monitoring of environmental sustainability.
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