Earth Overshoot Day: living beyond the planet’s resources
September 23 was an ominous milestone for humanity: it marked the day that we have used up all the resources nature will provide this year, according to calculations by the Global Footprint Network, a research organization that measures how much nature we have, how much we use, and who uses what.
For the rest of 2008, we will be in the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, drawing down our resource stocks “in essence, borrowing from the future”.
Our ecological overspending has stark consequences and the root of many of the most pressing environmental problems we face today: climate change, shrinking forests, declining biodiversity and current world food shortages, as we continue to demand more from nature than it can supply.
Humans now require the resources of 1.4 planets, but we only have one planet!
Earth Overshoot Day (also known as Ecological Debt Day) was a concept devised by Global Footprint Network partner NEF (New Economics Foundation). Each year, Global Footprint Network calculates humanity’s Ecological Footprint (its demand on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries), and compares this with global biocapacity—the ability of these ecosystems to generate resources and absorb waste. Ecological Footprint accounting can be used to determine the exact date we, as a global community, begin living beyond the means of what the planet produces every year. Their data shows that in less than 10 months we consume what it takes the planet 12 months to produce.
ICLEI, as an official partner to the Global Footprint Network, works to strengthen the Footprint and enhance its value as a catalyst for sustainability. “We encourage ICLEI Members to use the footprint as an indicator of their sustainability. Measuring sustainability is key to managing a city’s sustainable development”, noted Holger Robrecht, the director of sustainability management at ICLEI European Secretariat.
“From now until the end of the year, we’re dipping into our ecological reserves, borrowing from the future,” said Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, Executive Director of Global Footprint Network. “This can go on for a short time, but ultimately it leads to a build up of waste and the depletion of the very resources on which the human economy depends.”
Earth Overshoot Day is creeping ever earlier as human consumption grows
Humanity’s first Earth Overshoot Day was December 31, 1986. Ten years later, humanity was using 15 percent more resources in a year than the planet could supply, with Earth Overshoot Day falling in November. This year, more than two decades since we first went into overshoot, Earth Overshoot Day has moved up to September 23, and our rate of overshoot stands at 40 percent more than the planet can renewably supply.
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