Overshoot day: Netherlands has used up annual allotment of raw materials
Today is the day that the Netherlands has run out of the raw materials that the earth can produce for it in a year, according to the Global Footprint Network. Last year, overshoot day fell on April 1, but the improvement is not because the Netherlands has become more sustainable.
The overshoot date for each country is calculated by dividing the availability of natural resources (biocapacity) by its consumption (ecological footprint), and then multiplying it by the number of days in a year. The Netherlands has a large footprint, but relatively few natural resources, which is why its overshoot day falls early in the year. For the rest of the year, the Netherlands is living “on credit.”
“If everyone in the world lived like the Dutch, we would have used up everything the earth can renew in a year by May 5,” Joost Brinkman, the Dutch researcher involved in the annual study, explained to NU.nl. “Just like with a bank account, you can reason with common sense that at some point you will get into trouble if you spend more than you earn for years in a row.”
Last year, overshoot day for the Netherlands was April 1, but the improvement is because of better data on Dutch exports, not because the Dutch became that much more sustainable in one year.
Since 2005, the ecological footprint per Dutch person has decreased by 40 percent due to climate policy, more economical energy consumption, and more efficient industry. But at the same time, the Netherlands’ biocapacity was reduced by half.
Earth Overshoot Day, the day on which the world population has used up all the resources the planet can renew in a year, falls on August 1 this year. Qatar has the earliest overshoot day, on February 6, and Uruguay has the latest, on December 17.
