How much nature does a country use compared with what its own land and water can supply? Colcom Foundation treats that question as its primary test of environmental sustainability, relying on biocapacity data from the Global Footprint Network.

Understanding the Measures

The Global Footprint Network defines the Ecological Footprint as the area of biologically productive land and water needed to produce everything a person, population, or activity consumes and to absorb the waste it generates. Biocapacity is what the available area can actually provide. When a population’s footprint exceeds its biocapacity, it runs an ecological deficit. For a nation, that deficit means importing biocapacity through trade, drawing down its own ecological assets, or releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

What the U.S. Figures Show

Colcom Foundation reports that the United States consumed 227 percent of its available biocapacity in 1970. By 2020, that figure had reached roughly 240 percent. The increase came even though per capita biocapacity use fell by more than 20 percent over the same period. According to the Foundation, the net growth in overshoot is attributable entirely to population growth.

Overshoot describes a condition in which people consume natural resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate them. At about 240 percent, Americans were using well over twice what the country’s ecosystems can renew.

The Foundation then applies conservation targets to the data. If the United States sets aside 30 percent of its land and water under the 30×30 initiative, effective biocapacity utilization climbs to about 341 percent. Under E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth proposal, which calls for protecting half the planet’s surface, the figure rises to roughly 478 percent. The logic is that land set aside for nature no longer meets human demand, so the remaining area carries a heavier load.

These calculations sit at the center of the Foundation’s broader argument. Colcom Foundation, established in 1996 by Cordelia S. May and based in Pittsburgh, contends that environmental progress depends on population (P) along with consumption (A) and technology (T), the three variables in the I = P x A x T framework. Per person efficiency matters, the Foundation says, but a growing total population can erase those gains.

The organization funds public education on these findings and describes its approach as evidence-based conservation grounded in peer-reviewed science. Read this article for additional information.

More about Colcom Foundation on  https://www.privateequityinternational.com/institution-profiles/colcom-foundation.html