A PEGADA ECOLoGICA DO CONSUMO DE AGUA DO MUNICIPIO DE CAICo/RN

The depletion of natural resources affected by anthropogenic activities are still occurring of unbridled way, by more than the research and discussions on the theme sustainability has, over the last few years, if popularized. But, the man still persists in leave his footsteps. The Ecological Footprint (PE), proposed by Ress and Wackernagel (1962) and, more than the front, adapted by Dias (2006) and Bellen (2008), emerges as an instrument for assessing the sustainability of a given place from the calculations of consumption of items individualized. A change of climate patterns, the semi-aridity and the implications of family agriculture, are a warning of exhaustion of the current model of production and consumption adopted by persons of a given area or a municipality. Perceiving the need to measure that exhaustion, the study objective screens calculate the ecological footprint of water consumption of the municipality of Caico/RN, as the availability of water of the region is one of the main items causing the unsustainability place. For this purpose, uses-if a methodology based, mainly, by relation Parente (2007) and Chambers et al. (2000), from secondary data supplied by the Brazilian Institute of Geography (IBGE) and Statistics and the Company of Water and Sewerage of Rio Grande do Norte (CAERN), in which it calculated the Ecological Footprint on the basis of water consumption of people in the municipality of Caico/RN. Thus, it is concluded only for the consumption of water are needed global 966.835715 hectares of land to bear the flows into and exit of the region. However, this is a warning signal, proposing an urgent awareness popular, from practices of environmental education in the municipality and effective actions of local. KEY-WORDS: Ecological Footprint, Sustainability, Caico, Availability of Water.