ECOSYSTEM APPROPRIATION BY CITIES

We estimated the ecological footprint of cities in Baltic Europe and g lobally. The 29 largest cities of Baltic Europe appropriate for their resource consumption and waste assimilation an area of forest, agricul tural, marine, and wetland ecosystems that is at least 565-1130 times larger than the area of the cities themselves. Of the global human pop ulation, 20% (1.1 billion), living in 744 large cities worldwide, appr opriate for their seafood consumption as much as 25% of the globally a vailable area of productive marine ecosystems. The same cities' approp riation of forests for assimilation of CO2 emissions exceeds the full sink capacity of the world's forests by more than 10%. If the goal as emphasized at the UN Habitat II Conference, 1996, is sustainable human settlements, the increasingly limited capacity of ecosystems to susta in urban areas has to be explicitly accounted for in city planning and development.