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This year, the Ecological Debt Day is celebrated on August 1. This means that on that date, humanity will use all the natural resources that the Earth can renew for this year, according to the data Global Footprint Network.
Although this year we moved forward by only one day, with one small change in behavior, such as buying food from local consumers, we were able to move Environmental Debt Day back a day.
This year's advance of Environmental Debt Day is caused by a slight decrease in carbon dioxide emissions that is offset by a lower level of carbon dioxide absorption in the oceans.
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"The existence of environmental debt for more than half a century has led to a decline in wild species populations, as well as an excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The consequences are becoming more apparent, with unusual heat waves, forest fires, droughts and floods", he states Petra Boić Petrač, Director of Communications at WWF Adriatic.
This year's Environmental Debt Day coincides with the Olympic Games. Both Eco-Debt Day and the Olympics celebrate human potential, peaceful cooperation and fair play, but while the Olympics have a large number of diverse competitions, Eco-Debt Day runs only one - the biggest and most important race of all: the race to see if humanity can end ecological debt to the progress of the planet instead of its destruction.
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"It's really not sportsmanlike or fair that while we're breaking records, we're also breaking everything else in front of us. In this case, it refers to all the living world around us. Biodiversity includes all life on Earth - from plants and fungi, through microorganisms and animals to us humans - and its number is decreasing year by year. We are all interconnected, and the disappearance of just one thread in that web of life affects all of us directly or indirectly. The increasingly earlier arrival of the Day of Ecological Debt is a signal for the necessary vigilance in order to preserve biodiversity on the planet, and thus ourselves", adds Boić Petrač.
When we talk about the countries of the region, the dates are close to last year's. Let us remind you that Croatia also went into debt this year a day earlier - on May 28. Slovenia leads the way with a date of April 25, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which entered into debt on May 9. Serbia on May 23, Montenegro on May 30, North Macedonia on July 14, while Albania goes into debt on September 23.
Although the global trend of environmental debt has stabilized in the last decade, humanity is still lagging behind in this race. Our current position does not correspond to the set goals, such as protecting 2030% of the biosphere by 30 and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by around 45% worldwide.
Reducing CO2 alone would mean moving Environmental Debt Day forward by 22 days a year for the next six years. Platform Power of possibility it shows us examples of how disaster could be prevented by making good decisions.
The environmental debt will inevitably end. It is up to us to choose with which result, says WWF Adria.
