Overshoot and the Failure of Countries to Ready Themselves

This report, which draws on countries’  published economic strategies as the source, examines whether those national economic strategies account for resource security and ecological overshoot. It argues that such resource security is essential because economies depend on finite physical inputs, yet their GDP-focused frameworks largely ignore these constraints, contributing to persistent global overshoot since the 1970s.

Using a structured rubric and AI-assisted analysis of key policy documents, the report finds that none among the countries analyzed fully integrates resource limits into its economic strategy. While some nations show partial awareness, most lack binding responses. This report highlights systemic fragility and policy gaps, and calls on governments to map dependencies and build resilience in anticipation of predictable resource constraints and climate disruptions.

This report was launched for Earth Overshoot Day 2026

⇒  Click here for the full, downloadable report [pdf: 15 MB]

Additional Resources:

♥   A summary for policy analysts
♥   Technical Methodology which describes the process of the evaluation and documents the prompts used
♥   A summary for the general public
♥   A blog on the AI-based research methodology behind the report 
♥   A blog on the report’s conclusions
♥   Access to a Gemini Notebook where you can query the LLM outputs for each country. This one is useful for finding out what the LLM evaluation generated. It is isolated from expectations or perspectives provided by further context. This helps to test and examine country assessments just the way the LLMs found on their own.
♥   Access to a Gemini Notebook where you can query all the information embedded in more context. Here, the LLM generated country assessments are enriched with the researchers’ previous publications and perspectives. This Notebook would be more useful for inquiries that have also an interpretation dimension, for instance, if you want to know more about the rationale behind the analysis.
♥   Earth Overshoot Day 2026 press release [ready on July 28]
♥   Prepared for the Predictable? press release

This figure shows the extent to which countries’ strategy documents recognize (x-axis) and respond to (y-axis) overshoot. The green smiley face in the upper right corner indicates where strategies need to be, according to our rubric, to meaningfully recognize and respond to overshoot.