This year July, 29th is Earth Overshoot Day: “Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources (fish and forests, for instance) and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Earth’s ability to sustain humanity’s existence is linked to the planet’s productivity and its biological capacity. In the wider sense, this does not only refer to the resources that humans consume, but also nature’s capability to absorb and regenerate the waste that we produce. With a still growing population as well as an increasing use of natural resources, biocapacity is under constant pressure. On a sustainable planet, all of humanity would only use the resources and produces waste at a level that does not deplete nature.

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The ecological footprint has been established as a measure to quantify humanity’s impact on the natural environment. It is calculated by estimating the carrying capacity of the natural environment and comparing this to the levels of consumption and waste. It is measured in global hectares (gha) for the average biological productivity in a given year, currently at approximately 12 billion hectares (varying slightly between years). The ecological footprint then allows to put the actual global hectares that are consumed (and wasted) into the context of the existing biocapacity. A sustainable word would need an average ecological footprint of currently 1.72 gha. With changing consumption patterns and population developments, the gap between these two has growing constantly and exceeds the biosphere’s regenerative capacity. This map shows the extent to which countries overuse the world’s natural resources, colour coded by multiples of the carrying capacity of the planet.

A modified version of this map was published in the November 2018 edition of Geographical Magazine. The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.