sustainability Article Developing the Ecological Footprint Assessment for a University Campus, the Component-Based Method Salah Vaisi 1, * , Hooshmand Alizadeh 2,3 , Werya Lotfi 2 and Saleh Mohammadi 1,4   Citation: Vaisi, S.; Alizadeh, H.; Lotfi, W.; Mohammadi, S. Developing the Ecological Footprint Assessment for a University Campus, the Component-Based Method. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9928. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su13179928 Academic Editor: Benedetta Siboni Received: 25 July 2021 Accepted: 1 September 2021 Published: 3 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Art & Architecture, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj 66177-15175, Iran; saleh.mohammadi@uok.ac.ir 2 Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Art & Architecture, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj 66177-15175, Iran; h.alizadeh@uok.ac.ir (H.A.); Werya.Lotfi@uok.ac.ir (W.L.) 3 Institute for Urban and Regional Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1030 Vienna, Austria 4 Department of Architectural Engineering and Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands * Correspondence: svaisi@uok.ac.ir Abstract: Global warming has become an increasing challenge due to the impact of human activities on the environment. In this regard, university campuses with various activities and departments have a great impact on the environment. Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) is a natural resource depletion assessment tool, with a high level of accuracy, that measures the impact of human activities on the environment. Considering the Ecological Footprint (EF) capabilities, this study developed a method to assess the environmental impacts of a university campus using component-based parameters. The goals of the study are to explore the effective components of EF and to propose some policy guidelines to diminish the human impacts on the environment on university campuses. Five components, including natural gas and electricity consumption, water and food usage, and waste production, were measured in a survey from 2013 to 2016 at the building scale. The mean EF of the campus was 16,484 global hectares (gha). Fossil fuel energy had the highest level of environmental impact with 70.73%, followed by waste production and food and water usage with 26.87%, 1.28%, and 1.12%, respectively. The results demonstrate that the EF Index (EFI) of the case study campus was −0.82, which reveals an unsustainable performance. The EF results were illustrated on an Ecological Footprint Map (EFM), which shows the east and west parts of the camps were more unsustainable. Keywords: sustainable development; Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA); Biological Capacity (BC); environmental impacts; green university campuses; low carbon university campus 1. Introduction 1.1. The Serious Impacts of Humans on the Environment Current assessments indicate that approximately 83 million people are being added to the world’s population every year [1]. Therefore, food consumption is increased fivefold and the related trade enlarged almost twenty times. Balancing the food supply with this growing market has resulted in the conversion of wetlands into farmlands, indiscriminate felling of forests, overexploitation of fishery resources, and degradation of natural life- dependent areas throughout the planet [2]. The human pressure on the environment in terms of natural resources depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste production has been rising steadily [3]. Now the human ecological footprint is 60% higher than the world’s ecosystems renewal capability. In 2020, the ecological footprint temporarily decreased due to the widespread effect of COVID-19 pandemic global lockdowns; however, it is still far beyond what our planet can replenish [4]. The human pressures on the environment have led to a serious problem for the planet, with one piece of evidence being global warming, a crucial environmental challenge [5]. The planet’s mean surface temperature has risen about 1.18 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by carbon Sustainability 2021, 13, 9928. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179928 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability