What does environmental conservation actually involve? Colcom Foundation answers that question with a working definition: the organized effort to protect natural systems from human-driven degradation.

That definition covers a wide range of goals. Colcom Foundation lists species preservation, habitat protection, water and air quality regulation, urban sprawl control, and ecological footprint reduction among them. Each goal addresses a separate way human activity can wear down natural systems.

Two Reasons to Protect Nature

Colcom Foundation grounds its conservation work in two kinds of value. Ecosystems and other species possess intrinsic value, independent of their usefulness to people. They also provide measurable benefits, including clean water, food production, and climate regulation.

The economic side of this argument draws on the Dasgupta Review (2021), which concluded that natural capital underpins all economic activity. Continued biodiversity degradation, the review found, poses direct threats to long-term human prosperity and security.

How Degradation Happens

The foundation identifies two primary mechanisms behind environmental decline. The first is extracting natural resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate them. The second is emitting waste faster than natural systems can process it.

Human activity drives both. Colcom Foundation explains that people affect the environment mainly by appropriating natural resources for human use, which makes those resources unavailable to other species. Physical space, water, soil nutrients, caloric resources, and waste absorption capacity all fall into this category.

Scientific assessments back up the concern. The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment identified human land use change as the largest single driver of biodiversity decline globally. Bradshaw et al. (2021), in Frontiers in Conservation Science, linked current human numbers and consumption rates to a sixth mass extinction.

Once these mechanisms are clear, the foundation’s funding choices make more sense. Colcom Foundation supports a combination of approaches: limiting population growth, increasing resource use efficiency, regulating or banning the most toxic pollutants, placing land under permanent conservation, and protecting endangered species and critical habitat. Each approach targets a different link in the chain between human demand and ecological decline. Refer to this article for related information.

More about Colcom Foundation on https://www.colcomfdn.org/