Ecological Footprint for Environmental Sustainability at the University of Juba, South Sudan

Given the growing population of students and the new infrastructural development at the University of Juba, it is environmentally significant to investigate the ecological footprint of the University campus ecosystem in light of environmental sustainability. This study aims to assess and quantify the ecological footprint at University of Juba campus and compare them to the environmental sustainability. In this study cross sectional survey of 180 students and component based methods by Rees and Wackernagel were employed to obtain results of ecological footprint of water, food, land, transport, waste and energy at the University of Juba. Considering Ecological Footprint of students and staff on campus, Biocapacity was 1.16, ecological footprint remainder was 1.06 and ecological footprint index was 0.92. While the ecological footprint of Water, food, transportation, waste, energy and built-up land footprint were 0.04, 0.03, 0.03, 0.01, 0.0003 and 0.0002 gha/capita respectively. The result of the environmental sustainability practices on the campus revealed that 11 out of 44 environmental sustainable programs were not practiced on campus implying 27.7% of the university operation was unsustainable. Although, University of Juba was found to be environmentally sustainable, reducing its ecological footprint per capita by 0.89 gha/capita. Based on the study result, the Ecological Footprint per capita of water, energy, transportation, food, waste and build-up land at the University were environmentally sustainable (0.11 gha/capita). If, all people were living the lifestyle of the University of Juba, we would require only one planet Earth.