Colcom Foundation’s environmental protection page reads partly like a literature review. It draws on a set of peer-reviewed studies to support its view that population growth drives environmental harm. The Colcom Foundation argues that total environmental impact reflects both how many people there are and how much each person consumes.
Four Studies at the Center
The earliest is a 2017 paper by Crist and colleagues in Science. According to the Foundation, it found that population scale and growth rate are major contributors to biodiversity loss, a finding that informs Colcom Foundation’s integrated grantmaking.
Bradshaw and colleagues followed in 2021 with a review in Frontiers in Conservation Science titled “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future.” The Foundation summarizes it as finding that current human numbers and consumption rates are driving a sixth mass extinction, with vertebrate population losses accelerating since the 1970s.
A second Crist paper, published in 2022 in Science of the Total Environment, found that the scale and pace of population growth are fundamental contributors to biodiversity collapse, working together with per capita consumption to determine total ecological impact.
The fourth, by Cafaro and colleagues in Biological Conservation (2022), carries the title “Overpopulation is a major cause of biodiversity loss.” It concluded that population decrease directly facilitates ecological restoration and that smaller human populations are needed to preserve the biodiversity that remains.
Why It Matters for Grantmaking
These studies shape how Colcom Foundation divides its support. Rather than relying on efficiency programs alone, the Foundation pairs them with land conservation, habitat protection, and public education about the environmental impacts of population growth. Its funding also reaches ecosystem restoration and land acquisition across Pennsylvania and the broader United States.
The page also cites broader assessments, including the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment and the 2021 Dasgupta Review. Population’s role in environmental decline remains a debated question among researchers, and the listed studies give readers a starting point for weighing the evidence themselves. Each source appears under a related resources heading on the page. See related link for more information.
More about Colcom Foundation on https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/colcom-foundation,311479839/