July 29th 2021 was Earth Overshoot Day, which marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.
Earth Overshoot Day is hosted and calculated by Global Footprint Network, an international research organization that provides decision-makers with a menu of tools to help the human economy stay within the Earth’s ecological limits.
To determine the date, each year the group collects over 15,000 data points per country, largely from the United Nations Sources. Researchers then compare the Earth’s biocapacity to humanity’s ecological footprint, then determines the gap and projects the results onto the calendar.
The supply side of a city, state or nations biocapacity represents its biologically productive land and sea area, including forest lands, grazing lands, cropland, fishing grounds and built-up land.
The demand side, the ecological footprint, measures a populations demand for plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure, and forest to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel.
The concept of this day was first conceived by Andre Simms of the UK think tank “New Economics Foundation” which partnered with Global Footprint network in 2006 to launch the first global Earth Overshoot campaign.
Since then, Earth Overshoot Day has been creeping in earlier most years. The last few years it has landed on the following:
2017 – July 30th
2018 – July 25th
2019 – July 26th
2020 – August 22nd
2021 – July 29th
Last year was one of the first years that Earth Overshoot Day arrived later than previous years, a whole 3 weeks later.
This has been seen as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, which reduced humanity’s ecological footprint by an estimated 9.3%.
Although the methodology of the Global Network Footprint has been criticised, it cannot be argued that the initiative has value in its simplicity as a way of increasing awareness about the impacts of human activity on the planet.
These results alone demonstrate the role of Earth Overshoot Day as an Indicator that gives us a high-level understanding of how things are going in our planet.
At what point will the human population truly understand Earth Overshoot Day and wake up and realise what they are doing?
Bronwyn Reid | 4t Consultants
30 | 07 | 2022