Earth Overshoot Day: From May 4th, Germany lives on ecological credit – knowledge

If everyone lived like the inhabitants of Germany, the natural resources available on earth for this year would already be used up this Thursday. That’s going out Calculations of the “Global Footprint Network” out. According to the organization, around three earths would be needed if all countries consumed as many natural resources and caused emissions per capita as the Federal Republic.

The network calculates a national as well as a global Earth Overshoot Day for each country – the so-called Earth Overshoot Day, which fell on July 28 in 2022. According to the calculations, the German Earth Overshoot Day also fell on May 4th last year.

The basis for the calculations is the “ecological footprint”, a measure of the area on earth required for average consumption and waste disposal. For every person living in Germany, 4.67 hectares of usable space on earth are therefore required. However, the so-called biocapacity of the earth is 1.6 hectares per person – that is the maximum amount of land that the earth can absorb per person without being destroyed. This means that three earths would be necessary if everyone lived like in Germany.

“CO₂ emissions in Germany would have to fall three times as fast as before.”

In Germany, overexploitation is mainly due to greenhouse gas emissions. Three hectares per inhabitant would be required to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions, for example by having forests absorb excess CO₂. 0.7 hectares per inhabitant are needed for the production of food and clothing, 0.6 hectares for wood products.

“CO₂ emissions in Germany would have to fall three times as fast as before. At the same time, we have to minimize the consumption of raw materials if we want to protect the sustainability of the planet and human rights,” said Christoph Bals, political director of Germanwatch, according to a statement by the environmental and development organization. There are some positive approaches in this country. “But if we don’t accelerate it massively, it will still take us decades to find a way of life that is sustainable.” The young and future generations as well as poor people in the Global South have to deal with the most serious consequences of this decades-long overexploitation.

Globally, Qatar has the highest consumption of resources per inhabitant. Qatar’s Earth Overshoot Day already falls on February 10th, followed by Luxembourg’s on February 14th. In terms of resource consumption, Germany is in the top quarter of all countries. Around 50 countries, on the other hand, do not have a national overload day, so they operate within the planetary boundaries.

The consequences of the corona pandemic, which caused greenhouse gas emissions to collapse briefly in 2020, are not taken into account in the data from the Global Footprint Network. The latest figures on the ecological footprint are from 2018, which the organization justifies with a three to four-year delay in collecting and evaluating the data. In Germany, greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by around 100 million tons since 2018, according to the Federal Environment Agency to 746 million tons of CO₂ equivalents in 2022. Based on the current status, the national Earth Overshoot Day would probably only have to be celebrated in a few weeks.

With material from dpa

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