Earth Overshoot Day

As human beings, we use up Earth’s resources within a certain time. However, Earth has the capacity to regenerate resources. But human consumption of the resources exceeds that capacity. Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) refers to a calculated illustrative date of a year when this happens. The word ‘overshoot’ signifies the surpassing figure by which the demand of the human beings exceeds the resources regenerated.

The economic view on the concept highlights the day on which the annual regenerative budget of the planet gets spent, making humanity enter into an environmental deficit spending condition. This puts sustainability in question, along with making future generations vulnerable.

The Earth Overshoot Day UPSC syllabus will demand prioritisation from the students for their upcoming exams. You are required to go through the details carefully.

(Source: https://www.overshootday.org)

How is Earth Overshoot Day Calculated?

For calculating Earth Overshoot Day, you need to divide the biocapacity of the world by the ecological footprint of the world. Now you multiply the result you get from this division with 365. If the year is a leap year, multiply it with 366.

The equation is as follows:

The world biocapacity in a year refers to the total amount of natural resources that are generated by the planet Earth in that particular year. The world ecological footprint in a year refers to the total amount of natural resources consumed by human beings in that particular year.

Students who are aiming to appear in the UPSC 2022 should focus on the EOD calculation process.

Earth Overshoot Day 2022

The Earth Overshoot Day 2021 was on the 29th of July. This day was marked as the day when human beings exhausted nature’s budget. The Earth Overshoot Day 2022 will mark a major deficit in terms of the sustainability of the ecological balance on the planet.

Earth Overshoot Day India

The data pertaining from the recent years have highlighted India as a role model in the context of consumption of resources. While major countries have been major exploiters of the Earth’s natural resources, the Indian lifestyle provides for a possible solution to the problem. Some of the frontline countries consuming resources are Qatar, Luxembourg, the UAE, France, the UK, Germany, China, and Indonesia. It has been found that if the entire world starts living like the Qataris, an entire year’s global natural resources will be exhausted by the 11th of February. This data will be of importance in relation to India’s status in the list for the IAS Exam.

India finds itself in a much better position compared to the above-mentioned countries. India, with the second-largest population count in the world, still has a per capita consumption rate that is not at all in the danger area of getting unsustainable. The Global Footprint Network (GFN) is an organization that collects each country’s consumption data and compares those data with the biocapacity of the planet.

According to the GFN, in a hypothetical situation where every citizen of the world lives like a citizen of the United States, sustainability would call for a total of 5 Earth. This figure is 4.1 for Australia and 2.2 for China. In this same list, it is defined that people of the world living like Indians would actually call for only 0.7 of the planet Earth to reach sustainability. These figures will be important for the Current Affairs Quiz in the UPSC examination.

The above figures put India in a place where it can certainly be a role model for other nations to follow in the context of resource consumption. There are several aspects in the consumption patterns of the Indians that can actually work as solutions for the resource challenges in the world. According to the GFN list, Indian lifestyles call for only 0.7 of the planet Earth. The GFN list places 50 other countries in the same place, like India.

All these are included in the UPSC Syllabus. Thus, it is recommended that aspirants cover these details thoroughly and study everything minutely.