Assessment of Urban Carrying Capacity and Ecological Security of Sanandaj Using Ecological Footprint Method

Nowadays, moving towards sustainability is highly considered in different societies with different levels of technology and management. In order to have a stable and healthy city, planners, decision makers and experts have tried to seek indices, by which the urban communities’ capacity towards sustainability could be examined. In this context, the use of ecological footprint indicator in assessing urban carrying capacity has attracted so much attention in educational and scientific context. The present study attempted to investigate carrying capacity of Sanandaj in 2014 using ecological footprint indicator. The results showed that per capita ecological footprint of the city, for housing, transportation and food is 1.43 hectares which is less than the national per capita footprint (2.7 global hectares). The most and least parts of the ecological footprint belong to housing sector with 371923.5 global hectare (0.99 ha per capita) and to food sector with 382.917 global hectare (per capita 0.001) respectively. The bio-capacity of Sanandaj was 0.38 global hectares during this period that indicates the ecological deficit and an upcoming instability in this city. Also in this study it was tried to examine the ecological security in Sanandaj using pressure indicators of production, consumption and distribution of ecological footprint and it was revealed that due to the higher rate of production pressure (14.96) to consuming pressure (3.71), Ecological Footprint distribution index (3.03), was positive and showed that the city of Sanandaj is in a very dangerous state in terms of ecological security and would have a worrying condition in the future.