The fact that we are using, or “spending,” our natural capital faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continuously exceed income.

In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day.


The most pressing issue is of course, climate change, which in itself triggers other issues like an increase in glacial ice melting and sea levels rising.

The over-consumption of water means that agriculture, industries, and households need to fight for water.

However, the value of each drop of water is different in these three industries.

Water creates more money for industry and residential.

As a result, water is being diverted away from agriculture.

With less water, local food production slows down, thus food must be imported. This makes food more expensive for developing countries as less food will be farmed.

The shortage of water also results in 1 billion people lacking access to safe drinking water.

In fact, this is a more pressing problem than the food shortage around the world.

As many as 5 million people die each year from water-related diseases, and most death occur among children under the age of 5.

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This affects not only the land, but the sea as well. The upper level of the world’s oceans have been warmed.

When water particles get warmer, they get more energy, thus they start moving more and away from each other (like how you would back away from the weird person dancing wildly). The increased distance between the particles means that there is more volume.


Thus, when water is warmed, its volume increases - this is called thermal expansion.

In the meantime, rising temperatures also cause ice melt. All this melted ice and snow flows back into the ocean.

Coupled with thermal expansion, it is the reason why the global mean sea level is rising at increasing rates. Yup, it is accelerating.

All this extra water has no where to go except to flow onto land. This causes flooding for coastal land areas.


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70% of the world’s fresh water is ice and snow. It’s all kept nice and frozen in the Arctic sea, Antarctica, and Greenland.

However, ice sheets are losing mass, glaciers are shrinking, sea ice cover is reducing in the Arctic, and snow cover is decreasing in the Northern Hemisphere.
There has been a retreat of most glaciers worldwide with an accelerated rate in the last decade.

What is happening is that ice is melting due to rising temperatures on Earth, an effect of global warming. This causes sea level rise. You can find out more here.

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