Sustainability

Anneke SmitAnneke Smit, associate professor in the Faculty of Law, has taken up a one-year appointment as special advisor to the provost on the Detroit-Windsor United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise for Sustainability in Education.

Law professor to advise on sustainability in education

Anneke Smit is special advisor to the provost on the Detroit-Windsor United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise for Sustainability in Education.

graph showing increasingly early dates for Earth OVershoot DayOver more than 50 years of tracking, humanity’s consumption of resources increasingly exceeds the planet’s ability to regenerate.

Resource usage exceeds planetary capacity for year

Yesterday — Aug. 1 — marked “Earth Overshoot Day,” the point in the calendar when humanity’s demand for ecological resources surpasses what the planet can regenerate within the year, and UWindsor sustainability officer Nadia Harduar is pointing to efforts to address this imbalance.

“If we want to push Earth Overshoot Day closer to Dec. 31 or even later, we’ll all have to contribute to the effort,” Harduar says.