Today is overshoot day, Italy goes into ecological debt

Today is Italy's Overshoot day, as reported by the Global footprint network, i.e. the day on which Italy has exhausted all its natural resources for the year and therefore goes into debt by starting to use next year's resources. If all of humanity consumed like the Italians, three planets would be needed. With our own consumption levels of energy, water, food and other resources, all the renewable natural resources available for the entire year globally would already be exhausted. After this date, we enter a phase of 'ecological debt', consuming more than the planet is able to regenerate and eroding future resources and consequently degrading and damaging ecosystems. A date that comes significantly earlier than in previous years: in 2024 it was 19 May, in 2023 and in 2022 15 May. Globally, in previous years it has fallen in the first half of August.

To determine the Earth vershoot ay date of each year, the Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days in that year when the Earth's biocapacity is sufficient to meet humanity's Ecological Footprint. The rest of the year corresponds to the global overshoot. The Earth overshoot day is calculated by dividing the planet's biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources the Earth is able to generate in that year) by humanity's Ecological Footprint (humanity's demand for that year) and multiplying this by the number of days in a year.

A biocapacity deficit is the difference between how much a country consumes and how much its ecosystems can regenerate. Countries can run deficits for three reasons: net imports; use of global commons, such as C02 emissions; and overexploitation of their ecosystems. Biocapacity should be greater than the country's ecological footprint. It is estimated that Italy's ecological footprint per person in 2022 was 4.0 while its biocapacity was only 1.0 gha.

Among the three countries in the world that are the first to use up available resources are Qatar, whose overshoot occurred on 6 February (5 days earlier than in 2024), Luxembourg, which ran out of available resources on 17 February (3 days earlier than in 2024), and Singapore, which started using up extra resources on 26 February (33 days earlier than the previous year). On the other hand, the countries capable of sustainably exploiting resources are Nigaragua, Indonesia and Uruguay. All three will finish their resource budgets at the end of the year, the first two on 11 and 18 November and the last on 17 December, respectively.