How much nature does a country use compared with what its land and water can regenerate? Colcom Foundation answers that question with biocapacity data from the Global Footprint Network, which it treats as its primary sustainability measure.
Key Terms From the Global Footprint Network
The Foundation’s resource page quotes the network’s definitions directly. An Ecological Footprint is described as “a measure of how much area of biologically productive land and water an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates.” An ecological deficit occurs when that footprint exceeds the biocapacity available to a population.
When a nation runs such a deficit, according to the network, it is importing biocapacity through trade, liquidating ecological assets, or emitting carbon dioxide waste into the atmosphere. The page also defines biocapacity overshoot as consuming natural resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate them.
The U.S. Numbers
Figures cited by Colcom Foundation show the United States consuming 227 percent of its available biocapacity in 1970. Fifty years later, that share had reached approximately 240 percent. Per capita biocapacity use actually declined by more than 20 percent across those five decades. Colcom Foundation attributes the net increase in overshoot entirely to population growth.
Those percentages carry practical weight for planners. A figure above 100 percent signals that a nation draws on resources from elsewhere or depletes its own natural capital, and the Foundation argues that each additional conservation commitment widens that gap unless total demand falls.
The page then layers conservation goals onto the data. Adjusting for the 30×30 target, which would protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water, pushes effective biocapacity utilization to roughly 341 percent. Under E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth proposal, the figure climbs to about 478 percent.
Colcom Foundation, based in Pittsburgh and launched in 1996 by Cordelia S. May, uses these calculations to support its broader case that population size belongs in conversations about environmental sustainability. Visit this page for more information.
More about Colcom Foundation on https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/colcom-foundation,311479839/
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How much nature does a country use compared with what its land and water can regenerate? Colcom Foundation answers that question with biocapacity data from the Global Footprint Network, which it treats as its primary sustainability measure.
Key Terms From the Global Footprint Network
The Foundation’s resource page quotes the network’s definitions directly. An Ecological Footprint is described as “a measure of how much area of biologically productive land and water an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates.” An ecological deficit occurs when that footprint exceeds the biocapacity available to a population.
When a nation runs such a deficit, according to the network, it is importing biocapacity through trade, liquidating ecological assets, or emitting carbon dioxide waste into the atmosphere. The page also defines biocapacity overshoot as consuming natural resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate them.
The U.S. Numbers
Figures cited by Colcom Foundation show the United States consuming 227 percent of its available biocapacity in 1970. Fifty years later, that share had reached approximately 240 percent. Per capita biocapacity use actually declined by more than 20 percent across those five decades. Colcom Foundation attributes the net increase in overshoot entirely to population growth.
Those percentages carry practical weight for planners. A figure above 100 percent signals that a nation draws on resources from elsewhere or depletes its own natural capital, and the Foundation argues that each additional conservation commitment widens that gap unless total demand falls.
The page then layers conservation goals onto the data. Adjusting for the 30×30 target, which would protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water, pushes effective biocapacity utilization to roughly 341 percent. Under E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth proposal, the figure climbs to about 478 percent.
Colcom Foundation, based in Pittsburgh and launched in 1996 by Cordelia S. May, uses these calculations to support its broader case that population size belongs in conversations about environmental sustainability. Visit this page for more information.
More about Colcom Foundation on https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/colcom-foundation,311479839/