Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy

doi:10.1073/pnas.142033699

Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy

^*Redefining Progress, 1904 Franklin Street, 6th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612; ^‡Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Austrian Universities, Department of Social Ecology, Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070 Vienna, Austria; ^§Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad, Obreros Textiles 57 Departamento 6, Colonia Marco Antonio Muñoz, 91060 Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico; ^¶World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, United Kingdom; ^‖World-Wide Fund for Nature International, Avenue Mont-Blanc, 1196 Gland, Switzerland; ^**Green College, Oxford University, Oxford OX2 6HG, United Kingdom; ^‡‡Energy and Resources Group, 310 Barrows Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3050; and ^††Norwegian School of Management BI, Elias Smiths vei 15, Box 580, N-1302 Sandvika, Norway

Edited by Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved May 16, 2002 (received for review January 17, 2002)

Abstract

Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human demand on the environment into the area required for the production of food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the biosphere's regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanity's load corresponded to 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in 1999.

Footnotes

↵ † To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: wackernagel{at}rprogress.org.
This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
Abbreviation:

FAO,

Food and Agriculture Organization