Humans continue to utilize natural resources in a way that exceeds the ability of natural ecosystems to regenerate, prompting renewed calls for individuals and countries to reduce their ecological footprint.

The effects of this ‘ecological overshoot’ are evidenced by water shortages, desertification, reduced agricultural productivity, deforestation, biodiversity loss and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

To reduce our ecological footprint requires drastically reducing our carbon footprint, as the two are inextricably linked. Reducing our carbon footprint will have a positive effect on other components of our ecological footprint, such as the amount of land needed for food and timber production, and the amount of forest area that can absorb carbon from fossil fuels.

With carbon sequestration making up more than half of the demand on nature in 2015, the promoters of Earth Overshoot Day –Global Footprint Network – hope to further highlight how important reducing our carbon footprint is to reducing the in-balance between our ecological footprint and the earth’s biocapacity, or its ability to provide for this demand.

“At current carbon emission levels, it would take twice the current global forest biocapacity to absorb all the carbon emissions that are generated around the world,” explains Mathis Wackernagel, president of Global Footprint Network.

“This demand for carbon sequestration is greater than the entire biocapacity of crop land and grazing lands on the planet combined.”

Each year, the international sustainable think tank, Global Footprint Network, calculates the number of days of that year for which earth’s biological resources are sufficient for the world’s ecological footprint that year.

In 2015, Earth Overshoot Day occurred on 13 August. That means, in just 8 months we have used up nature’s budget for the entire year.

“We are already borrowing on 2016 provisions placing our world and future generations into even more debt,” writes Tony Simons, Director of the World Agroforestry Centre writes in his blog, Planetary debt bondage.

Not since the early 1970s has our ecological footprint been below the earth’s biocapacity. In 2000, Earth Overshoot Day occurred in early October. If we continue along this current trajectory, it is predicted that the world will need the resources of two planets by 2030. Currently it takes 1.6 Earths to support humanity’s demand on nature.

It is hoped that a new global climate agreement to be discussed in Paris in December 2015 will see consensus on the need to phase out fossil fuels by 2070 and other measures aimed at maintaining global warming within the 2-degrees-Celsius range over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

If this agreement is successfully implemented and global carbon emissions are reduced by at least 30 percent below today’s levels by 2030, the Global Footprint Network estimates that Earth Overshoot Day could move back to 16 September 2030, assuming the rest of the footprint continues to expand at the current rate.

The World Agroforestry Centre is proud to be one of the partners in Earth Overshoot Day and supports efforts globally, regionally, nationally and locally to bring down humanity’s collective ecological footprint.

In particular, the Centre, together with others promoting the science and practice of agroforestry, has developed knowledge and evidence for how trees in natural forests and agricultural landscapes can sequester carbon, harbor biodiversity and provide greater climate change resilience across the globe.

More information

More on Earth Overshoot Day www.overshootday.org

Read Tony Simon’s blog: Planetary debt bondage

To calculate your own personal Ecological Footprint, and learn what you can do to reduce it, go to: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator