Ecological footprint of an artisanal fishing cooperative in a lagoon body.

Abstract

The economic and social importance of fishing at a global level is based on the production of food and the generation of employment. Although cooperatives have become a successful business model, fishing cooperatives in Mexico face various problems. The use of sustainability indicators is useful to identify areas of opportunity. One of these is the ecological footprint from which the corporate ecological footprint was derived, which measures the environmental impact in surface units. The objective of this work is to calculate the footprint of a fishing cooperative, to identify areas of opportunity in environmental improvement through the evaluation and analysis of the footprint, to generate strategies. The calculation was made through the Composite Method in Financial Accounts. A gross footprint of 299.24 global hectares was found, as well as 688.96 tons of carbon dioxide. The areas of opportunity are the reduction of the category of materials, and the reduction of both the land use of forest resources and the forest ecosystem, both with a greater footprint impact. Future implementation of footprint monitoring is recommended in order to estimate annual reductions.