WWF: Humanity enters ecological debt on 30 July

WWF-Adria communications director Petra Boic Petrac said that although this year's Earth Overshoot Day falls six days later than last year, this was not due to reduced pressure on nature but primarily to updated data and calculation methodology.

She said current trends showed that the gap between human consumption and the planet's biocapacity continued to widen, adding that 2026 marked the highest level of ecological overshoot ever recorded despite the later date.

On 30 July, humanity will have used up the entire annual budget of natural resources and ecosystem services that the Earth can regenerate in one year, WWF-Adria said.

According to calculations by the Global Footprint Network, which developed the ecological footprint methodology, humanity is currently using natural resources 73% faster than Earth's ecosystems can regenerate them. WWF warned that this threatens ecosystem stability, food production and quality of life worldwide.

The organisation said the consequences of excessive resource consumption were visible in forest loss, soil degradation, biodiversity decline and rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, further intensifying the climate crisis and threatening food and resource security.

WWF said solutions existed, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainable food production to improving energy efficiency and the use of natural resources. However, it stressed that urgent and systemic changes in production, consumption and natural resource management were needed to move Earth Overshoot Day to a later date.

According to WWF data, countries in the region reached their ecological overshoot days much earlier than the global date: Montenegro on 20 April, Croatia on 25 April, Bosnia and Herzegovina on 26 April, and Serbia on 16 May.