Earth Overshoot Day has shifted back to July 29, says the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
This means humanity has used all biological resources that the Earth regenerates during the entire year by July 29, the same date as in 2019.
The deforestation of the Amazon has played a key role in the World Overshoot Day coming back to July 29 this year.
Humanity currently uses 74 per cent more than what the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate — or 1.7 Earths.
From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, humanity operates on ecological deficit spending.
This spending was currently some of the largest since the world entered into ecological overshoot in the early 1970s, according to the National Footprint & Biocapacity Accounts based on UN datasets.
So what caused the date to come back to what it was in 2019?
WWF noted that the prime driver was the 6 per cent increase in the global carbon footprint in 2020.
There was also the 5 per cent decrease in ‘global forest biocapacity’ due to a rise in deforestation of the Amazon’s rainforests.
Some 1.1 million hectares of rainforest were lost in Brazil alone, and there would be a 43 per cent year-over-year increase in deforestation in 2021.
