The day when people completely exhausted the reserve of the Earth’s resources for 2017 and began to live “in debt” with the planet, came on Wednesday, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) of Russia reports.
“Today, August 2, came the Day of Environmental Debt, when people completely exhausted the world’s reserve of resources for 2017. In the early 2000s, this day was in October, but every time it comes earlier. This year, people need 170 already % Of the planet’s resources to meet its basic needs for agricultural and forestry products, fisheries and the absorption of CO2 emissions, “the report said.
According to WWF Russia, 20% of the ecological footprint of Russians comes from food and non-alcoholic beverages.
“Food production has a significant impact on the environment, transforming it, while 30% of the world’s food is thrown away, which is almost 1.3 billion tons per year, while 50% of the land suitable for plant life is already used for agriculture. If you do not change people’s food preferences, the situation may become critical by 2050. The action “Day of Ecoland” is called upon to draw attention to the problem of overproduction and irrational use of food products, “the fund noted.
On the Day of Environmental Debt WWF Russia for the third time in Moscow holds an action “Account from the planet Earth” – when shopping in cafes and shops participating in the action, buyers will receive a check on behalf of the Earth. It will say that in seven months people have exhausted all the biological resources allocated to us for a year, and the remaining five months will be borrowed from future generations. The campaign’s theme is environmentally responsible production and consumption of food products.
“The global food system is one of the main drivers of transformation of landscapes and loss of biological diversity in the world, especially in tropical regions of the planet where hundreds of thousands of hectares of pristine forests and savannahs are cut and burned annually for pastures and plantations of soy and palm oil.” – said the main coordinator of the program “Green Economy” WWF Russia Pavel Boev.
The date of the Environmental Debt Day is annually determined by the research organization Global Ecological Footprint Network (GFN), based on the statistics of the UN agencies on the consumption of biological resources and greenhouse gas emissions.
