Earth Overshoot Day, 2021

WHY IN THE NEWS?

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), humanity has again used up all biological resources that our planet regenerates during the entire year by 29^th July 2021.

• Humanity currently uses 74% more than what the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate — or 1.7 Earths.
• From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, humanity operates on ecological deficit spending.

About:

• The day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources (fish and forests, for instance) and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in that year.
• The concept of Earth Overshoot Day was first conceived by Andrew Simms of the UK think tank New Economics Foundation, which partnered with Global Footprint Network in 2006 to launch the first global Earth Overshoot Day campaign.
  • Global Footprint Network is an international non-profit organization founded in the year 2003. Its key strategy has been to make available robust Ecological Footprint data.
  • The Ecological Footprint is a metric that comprehensively compares human demand on nature against nature’s capacity to regenerate.
• Earth Overshoot Day is computed by dividing the planet’s biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year), by humanity’s Ecological Footprint (humanity’s demand for that year), and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year:
  • (Earth’s Bio capacity / Humanity’s Ecological Footprint) x 365 = Earth Overshoot Day