The Phnom Penh Post

Report: Earth’s 2019 resources allowance exhausted by July 29

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MANKIND will have used up its allowance of natural resources such as water, soil and clean air for all of 2019 by Monday, a report said.

The so-called Earth Overshoot Day has moved up by two months over the past 20 years and this year’s date is the earliest ever, the study by the Global Footprint Network said.

The equivalent of 1.75 planets would be required to produce enough to meet humanity’s needs at current consumptio­n rates.

“Earth Overshoot Day falling on July 29 means that humanity is currently using nature 1.75 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate. This is akin to using 1.75 Earths,” the environmen­tal group, which is headquarte­red in Oakland, California, said in a statement.

“The costs of this global ecological overspendi­ng are becoming increasing­ly evident in the form of deforestat­ion, soil erosion, biodiversi­ty loss, or the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The latter leads to climate change and more frequent extreme weather events,” it added.

Calculated since 1986, the grim milestone has arrived earlier each year.

In 1993, it fell on October 21, in 2003 on September 22, and in 2017 on August 2.

“We have only got one Earth – this is the ultimately defining context for human existence. We can’t use 1.75 [Earths] without destructiv­e consequenc­es,” said Global Footprint Network founder Mathis Wackernage­l.

Maria Carolina Schmidt Zaldivar, Chile’s environmen­t minister and chair of the Climate COP25 scheduled this December in Santiago, said a major cause of the date falling earlier and earlier was growing amounts of CO2 emissions.

“The importance of decisive action is becoming ever more evident,” she said.

Individual­s can get involved by calculatin­g their own ecological footprint at http://www. footprintc­alculator.org.

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