At the most fundamental
level, the ecological footprint incorporates six measurements — city cover, carbon dioxide pollution, farm fields, fisheries, forests and rangeland — to reveal «the
aggregate area of land and water ecosystems required by
specified human populations to produce the ecosystem goods and services they consume and to assimilate their carbon waste.»
The proposed ERF also focuses on identifying
levels of effort for different countries without clearly
specifying the individual or
aggregate level of emission reductions for the developed countries.