Two high-profile conservation goals shape much of today’s debate over protecting nature. The 30×30 initiative aims to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030. E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth proposal goes further, calling for protection of 50 percent of Earth’s surface to preserve about 80 percent of species. Colcom Foundation has examined what these targets would mean for American resource use.

Running the Numbers

The Foundation measures sustainability through biocapacity utilization, using data from the Global Footprint Network. By 2020, the United States was consuming approximately 240 percent of its available biocapacity. Setting aside land for conservation reduces the area available to meet human demand, so the Foundation recalculated utilization under each target.

Under 30×30, effective U.S. biocapacity utilization reaches about 341 percent. Under Half-Earth, it climbs to roughly 478 percent. Colcom Foundation presents these figures to show how far current consumption already exceeds what the country’s ecosystems can supply, and how much wider the gap becomes once large areas are protected.

Protection and Human Systems Together

The Foundation presents conservation targets and population as connected issues. It cites a 2021 paper by Crist and colleagues in Frontiers in Conservation Science, which concluded that protecting half the planet and transforming human systems are complementary and mutually necessary goals.

That conclusion fits the Colcom Foundation’s broader framework, the I = P x A x T equation from Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. Environmental impact depends on population size, per capita consumption, and technology. Colcom Foundation reports that per capita biocapacity use in the United States dropped more than 20 percent between 1970 and 2020, yet total overshoot grew, a change it attributes entirely to population growth.

Colcom Foundation was founded in 1996 by the late Cordelia S. May and is based in Pittsburgh. Its national grants support public education and research on population and environmental questions, while its regional giving funds conservation, environmental, and cultural work in southwestern Pennsylvania. The Foundation lists the Half-Earth Project among the resources it recommends for readers seeking more background on large-scale protection goals. Refer to this article to learn more.

Find more information about Colcom Foundation on https://www.guidestar.org/profile/31-1479839