Overshoot day: Spain goes into ecological deficit on May 20

Today, 20 May, Spain has reached its ecological deficit, also known as Earth Overshoot Day. This is the date on which a territory consumes all the natural resources that correspond to it for a given year, from water to food, raw materials and energy.

The NGO Global Footprint Network is in charge of making this calculation and marking the day on which the natural resources that a country should have used up during 12 months come to an end, being the amount of resources that the Earth can regenerate in a year.

This date differs from one country to another; in the case of Spain, it has been reached 7 months before the end of 2024. The same is true for Europe as a whole, which reached the Overshoot day on 3 May. For this reason, 317 civil organisations shared an open letter addressed to the European Union, in which they demand a real commitment to work towards a climate-neutral economy.

In Spain, different associations have also spoken out to demand urgent change and denounce that the current system is not sustainable. The NGO Amigos de la Tierra has argued that it is necessary to reverse the current model of production and consumption, extend the useful life of products, facilitate their reuse and repair, limit the indiscriminate use of materials and energy to adapt to the capacity of our planet to regenerate itself, and increase public investment in climate, environment and society.

Overshoot day