Business-as-usual

Demand grows faster than supply

By 2050 accumulated ecological debt may be irreversible

Using several moderate United Nations projections, this scenario assumes:

1. On the demand side: modest rates of growth for both population and demand for biocapacity.
2. On the supply side: Initially, biocapacity will continue increasing at the same rate as in the past 40 years. Later, continued overshoot would impact productive ecosystems and biocapacity gains will reverse.

As per this scenario, business-as-usual would lead to an increase in an average person's ecological footprint from 2.2 global hectares in 2003 to 2.6 global hectares per person in 2050. The major contributors:

• Ecological Footprint of cropland and CO2 would increase by 60%
• Demand for grazing land and fishing grounds by 85%
• Forest use would rise by 110%

The resulting ecological deficit per year would add up to 34 years of planet's entire biologicial productivity by 2050. What this means could be gauged by some contextual indicators.

A mature forest contains 50 years' worth of productivity. Theoretically speaking, a forest could be harvested for 50 years before standing stocks are completely exhausted. However, in practice, overharvesting of a forest may prevent a forest from maintaining itself, resulting in ecological degradation and collapse long before the entire standing stock is harvested.

Compared to forests, other ecosystems like cropland, grazing land and fisheries, have considerably lower standing stocks. Therefore, the tolerance levels of these ecosystems would be much lower than the forests.