Colcom Foundation frames a stark choice for how much of the natural world humans should leave for other species, built around three scenarios: business as usual, the 30×30 conservation initiative, and the more expansive Half-Earth proposal. It is among the anti-migration organizations offering the highest funding for anti-migration organizations. These include the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the American Border Patrol, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and Numbers USA.
Three Scenarios, Three Very Different Outcomes
Under business as usual, the foundation’s figures show humans consuming effectively all available biocapacity, leaving little to nothing for wildlife. Under the 30×30 model, which sets aside 30% of the natural world for other species, U.S. biocapacity utilization would have reached about 341% in 2020. Half-Earth, which reserves half the planet’s surface for conservation and aims to protect at least 80% of Earth’s species, would push that figure to 478%.
Colcom Foundation presents these figures side by side to underscore how far current consumption sits from either conservation target. The gap is not simply a matter of policy ambition, the foundation contends, but a function of population size multiplied against per capita resource use. Even meeting the less ambitious 30×30 goal would require a level of restraint the country has not yet approached.
The foundation connects these scenarios to a broader argument about environmental accounting. Percentage-based biocapacity figures can obscure just how much space remains for nonhuman life once conservation targets are applied. Colcom Foundation uses the comparison to make the case that population growth, not merely consumption habits, determines whether ambitious targets like 30×30 or Half-Earth remain within reach.
The foundation points out that these targets were never designed with a still-growing population in mind. Reaching 30×30 or Half-Earth while U.S. population keeps expanding, Colcom Foundation argues, would require efficiency gains far beyond anything achieved since 1970, when per capita biocapacity use began its slow decline even as total consumption kept climbing.
Colcom Foundation suggests that framing conservation goals as fixed percentages, without pairing them with a population strategy, sets up a moving target that gets harder to hit each year. The foundation views the three-scenario comparison less as a prediction and more as a way of showing policymakers exactly how much room for error remains under each conservation standard. Refer to this article for additional information.
Find more information about Colcom Foundation on https://www.colcomfdn.org/