Sunday 17 / November / 2024
The world has overreached its sustainable biological limits for the year, according to the US-based environment NGO Global Footprint Network. Humanity now needs about 1.7 planets to maintain its consumption.
The ecological overshoot trend has "flattened" over the past five years, according to the NGO. But it's difficult to discern whether that is "driven by economic slowdown or deliberate decarbonization efforts."
Either way, curbing humanity's overuse of Earth's resources is happening much too slowly, the NGO added. According to its calculations, Earth Overshoot Day would have to occur 19 days earlier each year for the next seven years to reach global targets for cutting climate-wrecking greenhouse gas emissions.
Global Footprint Network CEO Steven Tebbe linked the depletion of Earth's resources, from cutting down forests to burning fossil fuels, to deadly extreme weather.
"Persistent overshoot leads to ever more prominent symptoms, including unusual heat waves, forest fires, droughts, and floods, with the risk of compromising food production," Tebbe said in a statement.
Back in 1970, the Earth's biocapacity — defined as "ecosystems' capacity to produce biological materials used by people and to absorb waste material generated by humans" — was more than enough to meet annual human demand for resources. But, in the half century since, we have steadily outgrown our single planet.
Inequality around the globe
The NGO also estimates individual countries' overshoot days. Germany's came on May 4, meaning that, if the whole world lived like the country, humanity would need three planets to sustain itself in a year. The United States and the United Arab Emirates, which will host this year's UN Climate Conference, reached theirs on March 13.
The Global South will bear much of the cost of the environmental destruction wrought by resource overuse — as will future generations, suffering through a climate crisis now being fueled by overconsumption.
Countries such as Indonesia and Ecuador do not overshoot until December and are close to living within their means. But they are the target of resource exploitation by richer nations like Germany.
"Germany is the fifth-biggest consumer of raw materials in the world, and is importing up to 99% of minerals and metals from countries in the Global South," said Lara Louisa Siever, senior policy advisor for resource justice at the German development network , INKOTA, in 2022.
“The big problem we have in Germany, that we have in general in the Global North, is that we have not yet understood that resources are finite,” said Viola Wohlgemuth, circular economy and toxics campaigner at Greenpeace Germany.
She refers to World Resources Institute data showing that 90% of biodiversity loss is due to "resource exploitation and conversion to products," and that this production also accounts for 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite this "enormous resource crisis," nations like Germany "have not learned," Wohlgemuth said.
But the driving principle of endless growth that underpins German economic policy must fundamentally shift if climate change and the "extremely grave problem of biodiversity loss" linked to overconsumption is to be addressed, Müller said.
This extends to the idea of "green growth," or what he calls "electric car capitalism," which is also based on the massive expansion of resource consumption — especially for minerals and rare earths.
Circular economy vital to #MoveTheDate
Germany's federal government is currently debating a new national circular economy strategy in an effort to reduce resource use — even if the same growth model is to remain, notes Müller.
For Viola Wohlgemuth, a holistic circular economy is vital to move back the Earth Overshoot date.
"We must change our business models so that products are truly recyclable," she said, referring also to the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle at the heart of the European Green Deal's Circular Economy Action Plan. Wohlgemuth also calls for an absolute limit on resource use in Germany.
