Living Planet Report 2012

"Ecological overshoot" is when humanity's annual demand on the natural world has exceeded what the Earth can renew in a year. This term explains how it is physically possible to consume for than one years worth of biocapacity, in that it takes the Earth more than one year to generate the renewable materials that people have used in a given year. This is because these renewable resources can and currently are processed for human consumption faster than they can be produced in the natural world.

There are obvious, direct implications for this magnitude of consumption concerning the environment and it's biodiversity. These consumptive practices will no doubt weaken the ecosystems they exploit as biodiversity will cease to thrive. There will be additional stresses on the resources people around the world depend on daily. We are currently finding ourselves in a growing biocapacity deficit as the global population continues to exponentially rise, particularly in dense urban areas. The rising population has generated a larger ecological footprint, as over-consumption and over-industrialization have created a deep dent in the supply of resources we depend on and pushed the limits of natural biogeochemical processes. 

Reversing this trend will become increasingly difficult in the near future because it will rely on a large scale shift in the focus of global economic policy toward the sustenance of the natural world. Mitigating current climate trends and reducing out global ecological footprint is not out of reach, however, it will require large scale conservation and restoration efforts.