Ecological sustainability is the bottom line for social and economic sustainability. Ecological sustainability is dependent on resource consumption and resource production patterns. Land and its productivity are critical for resource production patterns. The way in which the resources are consumed leads to the “Footprint” of a given area. The ecological footprint is classified, by the inventor of footprint, Dr. MathisWackernagel, into land use types such as Arable land, Pasture land, Carbon dioxide land, Forest land, Built-up land, fishing ground (sea land). It is computed on per capita annual basis. The size of the footprint implies the amount of resource being consumed per unit population in an unit area. Therefore, the footprint serves as a comparable measurement for the level of resource consumption. For example, the US which records a footprint of 24 acres per capita is comparatively 12 times than Indian footprint implying that a person in US consumes 12 times of an Indian. The footprint, therefore become a famous yardstick to measure the resource consumption of an area ultimately allowing to use them to measure sustainability (comparing resources in reserve (biocapacity) vs. ecological footprint of an area. However, computation of footprint is still evolving and normally done by dividing national consumption to a per capita. If a given nation is not having variability in consumption then this tool could be directly used to compute the footprint. Whereas, country like India which is not only having a very high variability among population, but variability is observed for a given group over seasons. Therefore, the computation of footprint from Bottom-up is a rational approach, provided the researcher is ready to invest resources to collect the consumption pattern from individual households.

This paper attempts to generate Ecological footprint through Bottom-up approach for Ananganallore village situated in Gudiyattam block, Vellore district of TamilNadu, India. Local biocapacity and ecological footprint was compared to revealed level of sustainability ofAnanganallore village. The study foundAnanganallore has per capita Ecological Footprint of 0.292 gha as against per capita available Biocapacity of 0.092hectare. These results are contrasting with national per capita Ecological Footprint of 0.8hectares and national per capita Biocapacity of 0.4 hectares. This study validates “bottom up approach” as reliable method for sustainability assessments and sub regional studies of this nature would be crucial for spatial planners for future resource planning.

Key words: Ecological Footprint, Sub-region, Resource and energy consumption, Resource production, Bottom-up
approach, Biocapacity