Global Citizen
August 16, 2021
For thousands of years, the natural world has allowed human societies to flourish by providing food, water, and materials for shelter and medicine. But the environments that supply these resources — bodies of water, fertile landscapes, tropical forests — are being depleted at an ever-accelerating pace.
The planet’s ecosystems can tolerate only so much extraction on an annual basis; beyond these limits, they can’t replenish and rebound to their normal levels. In 2021, countries exceeded the planetary limit on July 29, meaning 5 full months of natural resource extraction will take place in environments that have already been functionally exhausted.