As of last Saturday, October 6, 2007, the world's resources are overdrafted.
This date is designated Ecological Debt Day, the date marked every year on which human consumption of resources exceeds the amount the planet can produce or regenerate in a year; that is, when resource use becomes unsustainable. At this point, all additional resources used add more to the ecological deficit. This deficit has been accumulating, according to current calculations, since we first went into ecological debt in 1987.
Since then, not only has humanity annually consumed more than the world can renew, but it has done so with increasing rapidity. According to current calculations by non-profit organization Global Footprint Network, humanity's first Ecological Debt Day was December 19, 1987. By 1995, it had jumped back a month to November 21. This year, the October 6 date reflects an ecological footprint that is nearly 30% larger than the planet's productivity this year. In other words, globally, we are demanding 1.3 planets to support our lifestyles this year, while in 1961 we were using just half of the planet's biocapacity.
Past Ecological Debt Days
Source: BBC News
Degraded ecosystems
It's not just the non-renewable resources that might come to mind—petroleum, minerals, ores—which are under threat, however. According to a report by the World Resources Institute, World Resources 2000-2001, People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life, our ecological debt cuts away at our supply of renewable resources as well:
- Close to 75 percent of the major marine fish stocks are either depleted from overfishing or are being fished at their biological limit
- Logging and conversion have shrunk the world's forest cover by as much as half
- Fully 65 percent of the roughly 1.5 billion hectares of cropland worldwide have experienced some degree of soil degradation
- Pumping of groundwater by the world's farmers yearly exceeds natural recharge rates by at least 160 billion cubic meters—or roughly the volume of water flowing over Niagara Falls in one year and nine months
If we do nothing but maintain the status quo, according to the most moderate projections of UN agencies, by 2050 we'll be outstripping the planet's regenerative capability two-fold, and Ecological Debt Day will occur on July 1. It's uncertain if the earth's resources can even support this kind of consumption, says Global Footprint Network. If they can, it won't be for long. Without action soon to change our nations' directions, we may accrue an ecological debt too large to ever be reconciled.
RELATED LINKS
Vaclav Havel on "Our Moral Footprint"
World Resources 2000-2001, People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life
EarthTrends
