Earth Overshoot Day falls this year on 1st August. It is the day when it is calculated the human race’s ecological footprint exceeds the Earth’s annual biocapacity.
Today, Thursday, August 1st, marks Earth Overshoot Day, the point in the year when humanity has consumed all the resources that the Earth can regenerate in a year and begins to overuse the planet’s resources.
The Global Footprint Network, an international research organization that has been calculating this date since 1971, made the announcement on its website. Back in 1971, Earth Overshoot Day fell on December 25. By 1980, it had shifted to November 16, briefly moving back to November 20 in 1981. The date moved to October 18 in 1990 and October 20 in 1991.
At the turn of the millennium, in 2000, the annual resources were depleted by September 17 (September 13 in 2001). By 2010, Earth Overshoot Day had advanced to August 10. Forty years after the initial calculation, in 2011, the date had moved to August 6.
In 2020, Earth Overshoot Day was pushed back to August 16, due to the temporary decrease in resource use during the pandemic lockdowns. However, this improvement was short-lived, with the date moving back to August 3 in 2021, August 1 in 2022, August 2 in 2023, and once again to August 1 this year.
How is Earth Overshoot Day calculated?
In basic terms, the human ecological footprint is the land we need to produce everything we consume – cropland, fisheries and forests – and the waste we generate. Earth’s biocapacity encompasses the resources our planet has available to meet our consumption needs and can regenerate every year.
Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by dividing Earth’s biocapacity by human’s ecological footprint and multiplying the result by 365 days.
Similar calculations are applied on a country-by-country basis to determine Country Overshoot Days each year. Country overshoot days are published on January 1st of each year, using the latest year of the most recent National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts edition. Therefore, the 2024 country overshoot days are based on the 2023 edition.
This meant Italy hit its own Overshoot Day as early as 19th May in 2024. However, this was three days later than in 2022, when the country used all it resources by 16th May, as the country accelerated out of pandemic lockdowns.
