regenerative capacity. This is seen in particular in non-renewable resources wherein consumption outstrips production. In a general sense in his work, it refers to the depletion of global resources beyond the Earth's ability to regenerate them.</ref> Andrew Simms. The concept in this sense is based on the bio-physical carrying capacity of an ecosystem; through measuring ecological footprints human society can determine the rate at which it is depleting natural resources. Ultimately, the imperative of sustainability requires human society to live within the means of the ecological system to support life over the long term. Ecological debt is a feature of unsustainable economic systems. Political dimension Historical context There have been several debates around the notion of ecological debt, and this is mostly because the concept arises from various social movements in response to the distributional injustice of climate change's consequences on the environment and people's livelihood. Salleh, in particular, showed how the ecological debt manifested in the destruction of the environment and associated climate change the North has created is made possible through the process of modernization and capitalism. The rise of the nature-culture divide that emerged due to rapid industrialisation is a perfect illustration of a human-nature dualism in which human being has the central role above everything else. The notion of humans being embedded in the ecosystem that they live in is crucial to the discipline of political ecology. In political ecology, which reconnects nature and the economy, ecological debt is crucial because it recognizes that colonization has not only resulted in a loss of culture, way of life, and language for Indigenous peoples, but it has shaped the world economy into one that monetizes and commodifies the environment. For example, when the colonization of South America occurred over 500 years ago, European settlers brought with them their Eurocentric values, seeing themselves as better than and therefore entitled to the Indigenous people's knowledge and the land they lived on. In a perceived postcolonial world, large corporations and Western governments tend to present solutions to global warming by commodifying nature and hoping to make a profit out of it. This better-than-thou attitude has created the conditions for global warming to occur, making the North’s ecological footprint soar, while also constructing an ecological debt so large as to completely rid the entire Global South of their financial debt. During the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, attending NGOs created the Debt