Earth Overshoot Day
"Earth’s overshoot day" is the day of the year on which humanity exhausts the biological resources our planet can renew this whole year. In 2019, it was on July 29.
This visualization is designed to be interactive, you can visit the interactive version at this link.
The ecological footprint is the measure of the land and water area an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources and space it consumes, and to absorb the waste it generates.
Biocapacity is the measure of the capacity of the biosphere to regenerate and provide natural resources and services for life.
Footprint and biocapacity accounting helps us answer the question: How much do people demand from biologically productive surfaces (ecological footprint) compared to how much the planet can regenerate on those surfaces (biocapacity)?
Biocapacity and ecological footprint are measured in global hectares (GHA) per capita.
A GHA is defined as a biologically productive hectare with world average productivity.
A GHA is defined as a biologically productive hectare with world average productivity.
In the chart in the focus below, the brown line represents Earth's ecological footprint, and the green line its biocapacity. The lines cross on the year 1970: that year, our planet's footprint exceeded for the first time its biocapacity.
When was your country's overshoot day in 2019?
At country level, overshoot day is the date on which Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed like the people in that country.
This can be measured as the number of planets needed, in terms of resources, to support the demand on Earth’s ecosystem if all of humanity consumed like the people in that country.
Example: The Ecological Footprint for Switzerland is 4.64 GHA per person. Its global biocapacity is 1.63 GHA per person. Therefore, it would take (4.64 / 1.63) = 2.8 Earths if everyone lived like the Swiss. We can determine Switzerland’s overshoot day as:
365 * (1.63 / 4.64) = 128th day in the year = May, 9th.
How to read
In the radial chart below, each dot is a country. The bigger the dot, the wealthier the country.
According to their overshoot date, the countries' dots are placed on a circle representing the days of the year 2019 clockwise.
The length of the lines represents the number of planets needed to support the demand on Earth's ecosystem if all of humanity consumed like the people in that country.
In the interactive version, users can highlight their country of choice using the pink drop-down menu. If a country is missing from the chart, it means that its ecological footprint did not exceed its biocapacity, so it didn't have an overshoot day in 2019 - and that's good news!
This visualization uses data from the Global Footprint Network.
