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Among other things, the high emissions in the transport sector are contributing to the fact that Germany is already reaching Earth Overshoot Day
Photo: Jochen Tack / IMAGO
Germany has used up its resource budget for 2022.
On the 125th day of the year, all natural resources that should actually be available by the end of the year if used sustainably are exhausted.
Sustainable use of resources means that only as much is consumed as can be regrown.
All ecologically tolerable emissions would have been emitted worldwide as early as this Wednesday - if all countries in the world budgeted like Germany.
Germany lives "on credit"
The fact that »Earth Overshoot Day« was reached so early in the year makes it clear once again »how much we live over the limit, waste our scarce resources and how badly we continue to treat our ecosystems«, said Christoph Heinrich by the environmental organization WWF.
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Antje von Broock, Federal Managing Director of the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany (BUND), made a similar statement.
Germany is "absolutely going over the rails" and living "on credit and at the expense of the people in the Global South," she said.
Russia's war against Ukraine shows in particular how limited raw materials are.
The federal government must legally ensure the protection of resources.
If all countries were to economize like Germany, mankind would need more than three planets to cover the resource requirements.
The fact that Germany has already used up all of its resources is due, among other things, to the high energy consumption and high CO₂ emissions in transport and factory farming, but also to the pollution of the soil, air and groundwater.
Qatar and Luxembourg reached overshoot day in February
The date of the "earth overload" is calculated by the Footprint Data Foundation, York University and the Global Footprint Network - both for individual countries and for the entire planet.
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According to the list, a total of 20 countries used up the natural states even earlier than Germany: Qatar and Luxembourg reached Earth Overshoot Day in mid-February, and in March the USA, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Finland and Denmark, among others, used up as many resources as the planet can regenerate in a year.
In April, for example, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Russia and Saudi Arabia also crossed the border.
However, there are also numerous countries – above all on the African continent, in Asia and South America – which do not break the mark of earth overload.
In these states, the ecological footprint per person is smaller than the so-called global biocapacity per person.
The Global Footprint Network specifies this size as 1.6 gba, i.e. “global hectares”.
A "global hectare" corresponds to one hectare of land with world average biological productivity.
vki/dpa