AN ASSESSMENT ON THE TREND OF THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND THE COMPONENTS OF ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN BRICS-T COUNTRIES

Many factors, especially economic activities, population growth, and technological developments that have emerged and accelerated in the last fifty years, have negatively affected the environment and have become one of the important problems today. One of the criteria used to evaluate the negative impact is the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint needs to be met with biocapacity. BRICS countries have a significant share in the world population and their economic weight is expected to increase further in the future. For this reason, it is foreseen that the ecological footprint in these countries will grow in the future and bring important environmental problems. In this study, by adding Turkey to the BRICS countries, the ecological status and the course of the components that make up the ecological footprint were tried to be determined and evaluated with their reasons. As a result, the ecological footprint of all the countries involved in the study tends to increase. Brazil and Russia have an ecological surplus, while other countries have an ecological deficit. Considering that the economic weight of the countries will increase in the future, the ecological footprint will grow even more. Therefore, it is recommended to focus on renewable energy sources.