Ecological overshoot

Ecological overshoot is the phenomenon which occurs when the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity. Global ecological overshoot occurs when the demands made by humanity exceed what the biosphere of Earth can provide through its capacity for renewal. To determine whether ecological overshoot is happening requires the collection of global and nation-specific data regarding the availability of natural resources, the capability of the ecosystems to renew any natural resources that were consumed, and the rate at which the resources are being consumed, usually assessed for each calendar year. This data collection, and analysis is typically done by scientific and conservation organisations, such as the Global Footprint Network, which collects data to assess the ecological footprint of each country and the global community. Ecological data collected so far reveals that the global community has been exceeding the regenerative capacity of the Earth since 1970, which was the year when the consumption capacity of humanity first exceeded the biocapacity the Earth. Each year since 1970 humanity has witnessed global ecological overshoot. This problem is highlighted each year on Earth Overshoot Day, an illustrative calendar date obtained through calculation, on which day humanity's resource consumption for the year is considered to have exceeded the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources for that year. This ecological debt is often referred to as our global 'ecological overshoot'. The data from the Global Footprint Network has been used to create the graph below, it shows that since the 1970s the global population is increasingly compromising the Earth's ecosystem. The red section of the graph indicates that the global population have been accruing a global ecological overshoot since 1970. This means that the rate at which we are using natural resources exceeds the time required by the ecosystems to regenerate the resources and absorb the waste products that are involved.