Chile was again in 2024 and for the fifth consecutive year the first country in Latin America to reach the so-called “ecological overdraft”that is, in just five months it has already consumed all the resources and services of nature that it can regenerate in a year.
This means that from that day on it consumes the natural reserves (mainly water) of the future and does not allow nature to produce more and regenerate.
“This is not very encouraging news. Although the overdraft for our country in 2024 was delayed a few days compared to last year, it is still The situation that we are experiencing as a nation is very worrying, since this means that It would take 2.5 planets to live in the world if we all did it like the average Chilean,” said to EFE the water crisis specialist at Greenpeace Chile and geographer at the University of Chile, Silvana Espinosa.
According to platform data Earth Overshoot Dayhe May 23 was the symbolic deadline on which Chile consumed all the resources and services of nature that it can regenerate in one year.while In 2023 it was May 15, that is, eight days before.
“That is extremely risky, because this focuses on the month of May, which is month five of 12 months. So we are at the bottom occupying all our reserves for the future. Within the first five months of the year. And we are not giving it the capacity or enough time for nature to regenerate,” Espinosa warned.
WATER CRISIS AND ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION
For the activist, the water crisis that the country has been suffering for more than 10 years and the atmospheric pollution They are the two most critical focuses within the climate crisis of the Latin American country.
However, he also indicated that The delay in the date of Chile’s ecological debt “is probably due to some measures that were taken at the government level and last year’s rains”although “barely a week is nothing compared to the five consecutive years, being the first country in Latin America to reach ecological overdraft”.
According to a study by Alvaro Salazarresearcher at the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB) of Chile and the University of La Serena, is expected to Precipitation in the country decreases between 20% and 40% and the temperature increases up to 5°Cespecially in the Andes Mountains, where the country’s largest water stores, the glaciers, are protected.
“The two main factors (of the climate crisis) are the use of fossil fuel which pumps carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, which produces the greenhouse effect, which warms the average temperature of the planet. Furthermore, land use, such as the deforestation of forests, which cause a decrease in the absorption of carbon by forests,” Salazar assured EFE.
Chile is the country with the greatest drought in all of Latin America, an acute water crisis that affects, according to the General Directorate of Water (DGA), 49 communes and more than 1,600,000 people.
