Official dates of the Overshoot day 2022 published
(Sustainabilityenvironment.com) – On May 15, Italy will have consumed the number of natural resources that the planet can restore in a year. From the next day, the Beautiful Country will force the limits of the planet. At the current pace, it would take 2.7 planets to sustain the consumption and lifestyle of Italians. Although it has moved two days ahead of last year, the Italian Overshoot day 2022 captures a situation still far from a sustainable balance.
But what is the Overshoot day? A country’s overshoot day is the date on which Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed like the people in this country.
For this year, global biocapacity – that is, how many resources terrestrial ecosystems can produce – is fixed at 1.6 global hectares (gha) per capita, a unit of measurement that expresses the average productivity of a hectare of the surface of the planet. But of global hectares, on average, every Italian consumes 4.32 in 12 months. And the deficit widens even more if you take as a reference the biocapacity of the peninsula, which is half the world average: 0.8 gha.
According to data from Footprint Network, which calculates the Overshoot day 2022, Italy continues its trend of slight improvement after the peak of the early 2000s. The maximum gap between production potential and actual consumption occurred between 2004 and 2006. The per capita footprint at that time was 5.8 gha (with a biocapacity of 1.1 gha). A ratio greater than 5:1 has been the constant for Italy since the late 1980s.
The rapid decline, of Italy, is linked to the economic crisis of 2011. So to a decline in lifestyles and national production, not to a structurally more balanced. Between 2011 and 2013, in fact, the footprint of each Italian fell from 5.2 to 4.3 gha. Already with the 2007-2008 mortgage crisis, there was a decrease of 7 decimal places (from 5.8 to 5.1 gha in 2009).
Among the industrialized countries, the worst Overshoot day 2022 are those of Canada and the United States, both on March 13. Germany, France, and the UK all fall in May, on May 4, 5, and 19, respectively. China’s overthrow day is shortly after, June 2.