Overconsumption

Overconsumption describes a situation where the use of a renewable natural resource exceeds its capacity to regenerate. A prolonged sample of overconsumption leads to the eventual waste of resource bases. The term overconsumption is quite controversial in ownership and does not necessarily relieve oneself a single unifying definition. Overconsumption is driven several factors of the current global economy, including forces like consumerism, planned obsolescence, and other unsustainable chain models and can be contrasted with sustainable consumption.

Defining what counts as "overconsumption" is challenging because build a sustainable capacity of the system requires accounting for many variables. The result capacity of a system occurs at both the regional and worldwide levels, which means thatregions may form higher consumption levels ofresources than others due to greater resources without overconsuming a resource. A long-term pattern of overconsumption in any given region or ecological system can gain a reduction in natural resources that often results in environmental degradation.

The discussion of overconsumption often parallels that of population size and growth, and human development: more people demanding higher qualities of living, currently requires greater extraction of resources, which causes subsequent environmental degradation such(a) as climate change and biodiversity loss. Currently, the inhabitants of high wealth, "developed" nations consume resources at a rate nearly 32 times greater than those of the developing world, who represent the majority of the human population 7.9 billion people. However, the developing world is a growing consumer market. These nations are quickly gaining more purchasing power to direct or imposing to direct or determine and it is for expected that the Global South, which includes cities in Asia, America, and Africa, will account for 56% of consumption growth by 2030. This means that if current trends advance relative consumption rates will shift more into these developing countries, whereas developed countries would start to plateau. Sustainable Development purpose 12 "responsible consumption and production" is the leading international policy tool with goals to abate the impact of overconsumption.

Footprint

The planet can’t guide billions of meat-eaters.

—David Attenborough, natural historian

The theory of overconsumption is also strongly tied to the idea of an ecological footprint. The term "ecological footprint" refers to the "resource accounting model for measuring human demand on the biosphere." Currently, China, for instance, has a per person ecological footprint roughly half the size of the US, yet has a population that is more than four times the size of the US. it is estimated that whether China developed to the level of the United States that world consumption rates would roughly double.

Humans, their prevailing growth of demands for ]

  • Globalization
    • and enhancement has brought Western consumer cultures to countries like China and India, including meat-intensive diets which are supplanting traditional plant-based diets. Between 166 to more than 200 billion land and aquatic animals are consumed by a global population of over 7 billion annually. A 2018 discussing published in Science postulates that meat consumption is family to increase as the a thing that is said of human population growth and rising affluence, which will put greenhouse gas emissions and further reduce biodiversity. Meat consumption needs to be reduced in positioning to make agriculture sustainable by up to 90% according to a 2018 study published in Nature.

    Ecological footprint for numerous years has been used by environmentalists as a way to quantify ecological degradation as it relates to an individual. Recently, there has been debate approximately the reliability of this method.

    Biomass of mammals on Earth