Overshoot Day: Czechia exhausted its annual natural resources in April

Czechia reached its "Overshoot Day" last week. The statistic sets the date each year when human demand for natural resources exceeds the capacity that the Earth is able to regenerate in that year.

Globally, the Earth Overshoot Day initiative set the date for 2022 as 28 July. For Czechia, which does not fare well in the country rankings, however, this day falls as early as 12 April.

According to the Global Footprint Network research organisation's initiative, Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity's demand for ecological resources and services (i.e. the amount of ecological resources that the Earth is able to produce in a given year) exceeds the capacity that the Earth is able to regenerate in that year.

This indicator is determined by the deficit in ecological resource stocks compared with the waste and emissions produced, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. The various ways in which humanity burdens the planet are therefore compared with the capacity of ecosystems. Each year, the organisation calculates the number of days during which the Earth's biocapacity is sufficient to provide for humanity's ecological footprint. The remainder of the year then represents global overshoot.

Czechia fares poorly compared with the rest of the world

Czechia ranked 24th in the Global Footprint Network ranking, placing it among the countries with the largest deficits, meaning that Overshoot Day in Czechia theoretically falls as early as 12 April. As a developed country with a high level of emissions from industry and energy, this ranking is not particularly surprising.

Czechia also fares poorly within Europe, a large part of the developed world. Among Central and Eastern European countries, only Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have a worse environmental performance of their economies. Luxembourg ranks at the notional top of the European table.

The Earth Overshoot Day metric is another tool for raising awareness of climate change and its environmental impacts. The concept was first introduced by Andrew Simms of the British think tank New Economics Foundation, who launched the first global Earth Overshoot Day campaign in 2006 in cooperation with the Global Footprint Network. WWF, the world's largest nature conservation organisation, has been involved in Earth Overshoot Day since 2007.