Humanity will have consumed all the resources that the planet can renew in a year on August 2nd. Therefore, we will live “on credit” until December 31st, according to the Global Footprint Network and the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). In addition, the group warned that that moment arrives increasingly earlier every year.
For its calculations, Global Footprint takes into account the carbon footprint, resources consumed by fishing, livestock, crops, construction and water use.
In 2016 the “overshooting day” occurred on August 3rd. Although the pace of progression has declined a bit in the last six years, this symbolic date “continues to progress inexorably: this day went from the end of September in 1997 to August 2nd this year,”
emphasized the organizations.
To meet our needs, today we should have the equivalent of 1.7 planets […] The cost of this overconsumption is already visible: water scarcity, desertification, soil erosion, declining agricultural productivity and fish stocks, deforestation and the disappearance of species. Living on credit can only be something temporary because nature does not have a reservoir from which it can provide indefinitely,”
stressed the WWF and Global Footprint.
The ONGs added that greenhouse gas emissions represent only 60% of our global ecological footprint, but that there are encouraging signs indicating it is possible to reverse this trend.
Despite the growth of the world economy, energy-related CO2 emissions did not increase in 2016 for the third year in a row.
This can be explained by the important development of renewable energy to produce electricity,”
said the NGOs.
The international community committed itself at the Paris Conference on Climate (COP21) in December 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of limiting global warming.
Taking into account the latest scientific data, Global Footprint recalculates each year the date of the overshoot day since this ecological deficit began to deepen in the early 1970s.