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This Wednesday August 2 marks the date of Earth Overshoot Day, that is to say the time of year from which all the resources that the Earth is able to regenerate in the space of 365 days have been exhausted. A date calculated globally, but which differs by country. And which, each year, reveals strong disparities between rich and poor countries in the world. If France reached this limit in May, around fifty countries in Africa and Asia manage not to find themselves in an ecological deficit.
From this Wednesday, the planet will live on credit until the end of the year. That is to say that human activity will have exhausted all the natural resources that the Earth is capable of generating in the space of a year. This ratio between the planet’s biocapacity and the human ecological footprint, known as “d‘Earth Overshoot Day (“Overshoot Day”), is calculated annually by the international research organization Global Footprint Network since 1971. While falling in December when the think tank began to estimate it, the deadline has only reduced over the years, until falling in the summer in the yardstick of the 2010s. This year, the ax falls on August 2: “The trend is easing, but it is still far from being reversed”, underlines Global Footprint Network in a press release.
The “Earth Overshoot Day” is calculated by dividing the planet’s biocapacity (carbon storage through forests and oceans, sea and land surfaces) by humanity’s ecological footprint (waste production, CO2 emissions, etc. .) and multiplying the result by 365 (the number of days in the year) in each country of the world. Some manage to escape the ecological deficit. Although they can be counted on the fingers of one hand (about fifty), they are found mainly in Asia, South America and Africa. Among them, Uruguay, Honduras, Nicaragua, India, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan.
These differences are explained by the country’s GDP and the consumption habits of the inhabitants, which are lower than in rich countries. As for the countries that present an ecological debt, certain differences turn out to be spectacular. In Qatar and Luxembourg, the fateful date falls, for example, on February 10 and 14 respectively, while Jamaica will exhaust its resources on December 20, ten months later. In France, Earth Overshoot Day was reached on May 5.
Europeans alone use 20% of the Earth’s biocapacity
In a report published on May 9 2019, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) points out that if all the inhabitants of the planet had consumption habits similar to those of Europeans, it would take the equivalent of 2.8 planet Earths to meet their needs until the end of the year. The NGO points out that the population of the European Union represents only 7% of the world’s population, but that Europeans alone use 20% of the Earth’s biocapacity.
In 2022, the ax fell on July 28, July 29 in 2021 and August 22 in 2020, with a spectacular decline linked to the slowdown in human activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. While summers are beating sad records of drought and heat year after year, and the world’s forests are on fire, the slight decline in the date of Overshoot Day in 2023 therefore sounds like scant consolation. As much as “Earth Overshoot Day’s apparent delay of five days from last year isn’t entirely good news, as the actual advancements are less than a day. The remaining four days are due to the integration of improved datasets in the new edition of accounts“, says Global Footprint Network.
“Halving food waste would save 13 days”
“Over the past five years, the trend has stabilized. It is difficult to determine to what extent this phenomenon is due to an economic slowdown or to deliberate decarbonization efforts. Anyway, overshoot reduction is way too slow“, slice Global Footprint Network. To reduce carbon emissions by 43% in the world by 2030 compared to 2010 (in accordance with the objective set by the IPCC of the United Nations), it would be necessary to move the “Day of the overrun “of 19 days per year over the next seven years”, recalls the organization.
However, solutions exist to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and delay the date of Earth Overshoot Day. According to the think tank’s estimates, increasing global low-carbon electricity sources from 39% to 75% would, for example, help push the deadline back 26 days, while reducing half the production of food waste would save an additional 13 days.