TORONTO, July 22, 2025 – Earth Overshoot Day (July 24) is more than a week early this year resulting from humanity’s growing ecological footprint amid trade wars and tariffs, which play a potential role in the ecological footprint of Canada and many others, says , director of the  in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change.

Trade can enable – and mask – the extent to which countries depend upon others for food and natural resources, says Miller, who is available to speak with media about Earth Overshoot Day and what it means for Ontario and the rest of Canada, and the world.

Researchers at 91��ɫ and the University of Iceland measured the “biocapacity” of all countries’ lands and waters, and how much of it was traded to support the ecological footprint of people in other countries. For example, Canadian forests, more than some 350 times the City of Toronto, were used to support the net imports of softwood lumber by the United States in recent years.

Trade patterns have changed over the years with some countries, such as Canada, exporting far more than they consume or in the case of Italy, importing more than they export, and these patterns could be changing further in this country as interprovincial trading ramps up.

The effect on each country’s ecological footprint can be seen in the most recent data from , including estimates for how well Canada fares. Canada uses a significantly larger ecological footprint for production than consumption.

“Humanity is using more resources than the Earth can regenerate in a year, and it has been doing so for the last half a century,” says Miller. “The amount we produce, consume and trade continues to increase as we use more resources.”

Close to one third of what the world produces today is not consumed domestically, but instead exported elsewhere, more than double what it was in 1961. Since this time, this amount has grown with only temporary small decreases following world financial crises and the pandemic.

Miller leads a team of researchers and graduate students to produce the  for the , a Canadian not-for-profit organization.

The latest dataset tracks ecological footprint and biocapacity at national and global levels, as well as individually, for 244 countries and territories on a national and trade basis, from 1961 to 2024. It also breaks it down by component, measuring production, imports and exports – trade – and consumption (imports minus exports).

There is a reliable timeline of data for 191 of those countries that allows researchers to see trends over time.

“Using this data allows us to generate the footprint for the national accounts but they also allow us to analyse trends in production and also trade, which has been in the news a lot lately,” says Kiona Lo, senior data analyst, International Ecological Footprint Learning Lab (IEFLL).

Ecological Footprint is the area of land and water people use to grow food and harvest renewable materials to sustain them, in addition to the area occupied by settlements and infrastructure and the area of forests needed to sequester human-generated carbon emissions. Biocapacity is a measure of the ecological potential of an area and includes fishing grounds, built-up land, such as buildings, houses, roads and other infrastructure, cropland, grazing land, and forest biocapacity (the forests’ capacity to supply forest products or to absorb carbon).

“Looking ahead 25 years, the year 2050 is significant as that’s when most of the countries in the world have committed to reaching net zero emissions. To achieve net zero emissions, and end overshoot, each country will need to have its ecological footprint within its biocapacity. That means by 2050 the amount of carbon emissions produced by burning fossil fuels, for example, should be no greater that what can be sequestered by the lands and waters of the planet,” says Miller.

Although the data shows consumption has slowed worldwide, it has still reached the highest ecological footprint since data keeping began.

“It raises the question of what level of reduction in ecological footprint is needed to achieve that worldwide. It’s a 2.1 per cent annual reduction in the world’s ecological footprint for the next 25 years. If we don’t change the current trajectory, it will be a significant challenge to reach the net zero emissions goal.”

Currently, the biocapacity of almost 1.8 Earths would be needed to sustain humanity’s ecological footprint.

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Data generated by researchers at shows 2023 to be a record-breaking year for humanity’s Ecological Footprint, which is predicted to exceed what the Earth can regenerate this year by tomorrow (August 1) – . 

All components of the Ecological Footprint – cropland, grazing land, fish harvests, built-up land, forest products, and carbon emissions – were larger than ever before.

The annual Overshoot Day prediction, based on data produced out of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, continues to worsen.

“Earth Overshoot Day highlights excess consumption that needs to be reduced. It can also measure the significance of actions such as carbon pricing and reducing food waste,” says Eric Miller, director of the Ecological Footprint Initiative in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. “Humanity needs to reduce its Ecological Footprint by 2.1 per cent annually, every year from now until 2050 to end overshoot. Ending overshoot is necessary to reach net zero emissions.”

The Ecological Footprint is calculated as the area occupied by settlements, plus the land used for agriculture, the waters used for capturing or culturing fish, the area of harvested forests, and the area of unharvested forests that would be needed to absorb humanity’s carbon emissions. Researchers also measured the biocapacity of lands and waters within all countries. Calculations integrated tens of millions of data points from international data sources.

Humanity needs to reduce its Ecological Footprint by 2.1 per cent annually, every year from now until 2050 to end overshoot.

Eric Miller

Canada is one of . More than 9,000 companies, 1,000 cities, 1,000 educational institutions, and 600 financial institutions have joined the  to reduce emissions.

Net zero emissions can be achieved by reducing greenhouse gasses to the point at which their annual total can be sequestered by ecosystems within the same year. Ecosystems can only do this if they are not being used for other purposes, such as housing people, supporting infrastructure or being harvested. A comprehensive accounting of these different uses and capacities of lands and waters is provided by National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts. This accounting is necessary for effective policy and legislation around the world.

“Our dataset is the most comprehensive and recent measure of what’s necessary for sustainability,” says Miller, who leads a team of researchers and graduate students to produce the����for the��, a Canadian not-for-profit organization.

Quick facts

Mississauga and Toronto:

• 56 times the area of Mississauga was needed to support Mississauga’s Ecological Footprint.
• Toronto’s average per-person Ecological Footprint was lower than the Ontario average.

Ontario compared to the Canadian average:

• Ontario’s Ecological Footprint and biocapacity were measured in 2020 from 2005-2015.
• Ontario’s Ecological Footprint declined between 2005 to 2015, resulting from the end of coal-fired generation and changing diets in Ontario. The province’s Ecological Footprint declined to 11 per cent below the Canadian average, from a prior high of 14 per cent more than the average.
• Cropland in Ontario yielded almost twice as much than average cropland in Canada, and with yields above the world-average in 2015.

Ontario’s greenbelt:

• Ontario’s greenbelt provided an average of twice the level of biocapacity per hectare as other lands in Ontario. Most of this biocapacity was provided by cropland in the greenbelt.
• Ontario’s greenbelt yielded crops that could satisfy the total needs of 2.2 million Ontarians.

Canada compared to the rest of the world:

• An average consumer in Canada had an Ecological Footprint of 7.4 global hectare (gha). This was about the same as the United States average, higher than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development country average of 5.6gha, and much higher than the global human average of 2.6gha. More than half of Canada’s Ecological Footprint comes from burning fuels, followed by high consumption of forest products.
• More than four per cent of global biocapacity existed within Canada, ranked fifth highest in the world.
• Each dollar of Canadian exports required twice as much Ecological Footprint for its production than each dollar of imports. Canada exported footprint-intensive timber products, grains and edible oils, fuels and minerals.

91��ɫ:

• 91��ɫ measures its Ecological Footprint and biocapacity and greenhouse gas emissions. Data published in 2023 shows that 91��ɫ’s campuses in Toronto and Costa Rica provide one per cent of the land area needed to support its Ecological Footprint.
• 91��ɫ’s emissions have trended below the Canadian university sectoral average.
• 91��ɫ aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.

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91��ɫ’s Ecological Footprint Initiative will release data showing changes up to 2022

TORONTO, April 17, 2023 – What is the size of Canada’s ecological footprint, and that of the rest of the world, and how did that change during the global pandemic?

Researchers at 91��ɫ will release the Ecological Footprint of Canada, and 200 other countries, from 1961 to 2022, at an on Thursday, April 20, from 1 to 2 p.m.

Ecological Footprint measures the area of land and water used to grow food and renewable materials, plus the area occupied by settlements and infrastructure, as well as the area of forests needed to soak up carbon emissions.

“Canada reports on GDP with a lag of just a few months, yet its environmental data lags by years. We filled in gaps and lags to make it easier to assess environmental performance in Canada and around the world,” says Eric Miller, director of 91��ɫ's  in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. “Time is ticking. Each year of action or inaction matters for the future of humanity. For this reason, our data reports on Ecological Footprint up to the end of 2022.”

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, humanity’s Ecological Footprint has been in overshoot of the planet’s capacity to sustain it. Since 1961 humanity’s footprint has tripled.

“For each country we calculate the footprint of what was produced and what was consumed. The difference comes from the footprint embodied within the goods imported to the country, and the footprint of the goods exported by the country,” says Miller.

“Canada, for example, produces more wood products than it consumes, with the difference as exports. We generate this data for all countries, to reveal the ecological dimensions of global supply chains and the extent to which countries effectively offload their ecological requirements onto others.”

This is the fifth anniversary of 91��ɫ producing data about ecological footprint and biocapacity, and supplying that data on an open-source basis to researchers around the world.

This year’s data will also include a more robust look at the footprint of fish harvests, including unreported catch. “In Canada, fish harvests were significantly underreported up to the point of the cod collapse. By including underreports, we can help researchers see these trends much more easily,” says Katie Kish, Ecological Footprints Initiative research associate.

Register here:

Speakers:

91��ɫ's new Chief Sustainability Officer Mike Layton will kick off the event, followed by updates to the 2023 accounts from Ecological Footprint Initiative Director Eric Miller, along with data analysts Sila Basturk Agiroglu and Peri Dworatzek.

Katie Kish will talk about research futures and the growing international research network for the global footprint family, with a direct focus on better public-facing data and data for communities.

Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder and president of the Global Footprint Network, will discuss the state of the footprint and a look towards the future. One example he will draw on is the Kunming/Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework with 23 targets agreed upon at the 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. These targets include the Ecological Footprint as a measurement tool.

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