CAIRO – 30 July 2017: By August 2, the earth’s population will use more Natural resources than the planet can renew in the whole year, according to a report published by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Global Footprint Network on Tuesday.
The report indicates that the humanity reached the “overshoot point” and will consume planetary resources such as water, soil and clean air for 2017 by next week and before the Earth overshoot day on August 2.
The environmental groups’ statement on the occasion of launching the report said: "In seven months, we emitted more carbon than the oceans and forests can absorb in a year, we caught more fish, felled more trees, harvested more, and consumed more water than the Earth was able to produce in the same period."
The report mentions that the consumption rate of resources for 2017 exceeds the 2016 rate, and that we need an equivalent of 1.7 planets to produce enough to meet humanity’s needs at the current consumption rates.
In addition, the groups said that greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and gas, making up 60 percent, are now the fastest growing mankind ecological "footprint" on the planet.
They stated that individual sense of responsibility can contribute to stopping and eventually reversing this trend by eating less meat, burning less fuel, using family planning methods, reducing driving and cutting back on food waste. The groups said that if people reduced their driving by half around the world, the Earth Overshoot Day would be moved by 10 days.
The Earth Overshoot Day is marked annually by monitoring natural resources consumption rates through calculating United Nations (UN) data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport, and energy production. In 2017 it is August 2, while in 1993; the day fell on October 21, in 2003 on September 22 and last year on August 13.
The environmental groups said in 2016, that in 1961 the humankind used only about three-quarters of Earth’s annual resource allotment. By the 1970s, economic and population growth sent Earth into annual overshoot.
According to findings and forecasts of the United Nations annual population survey published in June 2017, the world’s population stands at almost 7.6 billion and expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. The population increasing rate is 1.1 percent annually, which equates to an extra 83 million people every year. The median age of the world’s population is 30 years old.
In November 2016, the Paris Agreement, Paris climate accord, or Paris climate agreement entered into force following ratification by 159 countries. The agreement falls under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance. The agreement aims at keeping global average temperatures from rising beyond 2 Celsius degrees by the end of the century. In 2017, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is an independent organization and one of the world's largest conservation organizations established in 1961 in Switzerland. The WWF's mission is to stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment, and build a future, in which people live in harmony with nature.
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