GRAY MAGUIRE: Why Earth Overshoot Day should get more attention

While the public’s attention was focused on the Brics summit this month, a lesser observed date slipped by largely unnoticed. The relatively inauspicious “Earth Overshoot Day” that was observed during August marks the date when humanity’s demand for natural resources (or ecological footprint) in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in that year.

Given that our ecological footprint’s single largest component (as much as 60%) comprises humanity’s carbon footprint, it was fitting that Overshoot Day should fall in the same month that record high fossil fuel subsidies for the previous year, as well as record high global air temperatures and global ocean surface temperatures, were announced. 

It seems that we are determined to test the limits of our planetary system’s resilience. With July being estimated as already having tipped the ominous 1.5°C atmospheric heating mark relative to the pre-industrial era, it is little wonder that UN secretary-general António Guterres warned recently that “the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived”. Thankfully, there is an ever-growing army of sustainability-orientated professionals who are driving research and new business models to help blunt the rapidly oncoming climate change-induced pain.  

The CSIR’s Science, Technology & Innovation for a Circular Economy is one such group that caught my eye last week with the release of a new report assessing the potential to blunt the effect of the rapidly escalating climate crises by harnessing climate mitigation actions as a driver for transitioning to a circular economy in SA. This latest report builds on a series of sector-specific outputs from the CSIR that show how circular economy interventions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2050 relative to “business as usual”, by adopting a range of measures to design out waste and regenerate natural systems. 

Trade partners

Success in this low-carbon development agenda will, however, be much affected by our choice of trade partners, which is one of the elements of the Brics vs West debate that has been largely neglected in media coverage of the subject. While it is still too early to comment on the efficacy of the US’s Inflation Reduction Act with respect to its potential as a low-carbon economy partner, the CSIR report does warrant discussion about some of the lesser known market effects of components of the European Green Deal.  

With so much focus on the anticipated trade effects of the EU’s imminent Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the development of the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) has largely gone unnoticed. The CEAP outlines the ambition of the EU to transform its economy from the existing linear “make-use-dispose” model into a circular one, which depending on our positioning may well represent a real threat to SA exporters to the EU. While the CSIR estimates that $1.5bn of SA exports (based on 2021 data) is at risk from the CBAM, SA stands to lose €8.4bn in raw material exports if the EU moves to a fully circular economy.  

While the CBAM and CEAP pose a threat to exports in several “primary” production activities, there are also market opportunities presented by the EU’s decarbonisation agenda. Some of the outputs from industries threatened by the rollout of the European Green Deal are used as inputs in broader “environmental goods”. These are downstream products from high emitting sectors that have been identified under the OECD’s Combined List of Environmental Goods. These products present opportunities for current “at-risk” market players to diversify and expand into downstream products that are used to mitigate or remediate environmental damage, reduce environmental risk and drive resource use efficiency. 

While the SA government persists in aligning itself with high carbon emitting and resource consumptive Brics countries, our largest trading bloc partner is enacting reforms that are flying by under our radar.  

• Maguire is carbon project manager at Climate Neutral Group SA. He writes in his personal capacity.