One million. That is the number of plant and animal species the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment estimated could face extinction, a figure higher than at any prior point documented in human history. Colcom Foundation cites the assessment as part of the scientific basis for its conservation grantmaking, alongside a body of peer reviewed research linking biodiversity loss directly to the scale of human population and consumption patterns worldwide over recent decades.
What the Research Shows
A 2021 review published in Frontiers in Conservation Science by Bradshaw and colleagues concluded that current human numbers and consumption rates are driving what researchers describe as a sixth mass extinction, with vertebrate population losses speeding up since the 1970s. Separate research published in Science of the Total Environment in 2022 found that population growth’s scale and pace contribute directly to biodiversity collapse, working alongside per capita consumption to determine the total pressure placed on ecosystems around the globe. Colcom Foundation draws on findings like these to argue that biodiversity strategies focused only on habitat protection or pollution controls miss half of the underlying problem driving species loss.
The foundation’s response includes funding for endangered species preservation, ecosystem restoration, and land conservation intended to hold species populations steady while broader population trends play out over coming decades. Colcom Foundation also backs public education grants explaining these dynamics to a wider audience, on the theory that conservation funding can slow habitat loss but cannot, by itself, reverse a global decline tied so closely to how many people the planet supports and how much each person consumes. Restoring degraded habitat and protecting land that remains intact both stay priorities within that framework going forward into future grant cycles. Colcom Foundation treats the two goals as complementary rather than competing, since a stable or shrinking human population still needs restored ecosystems to recover the ground already lost over the past half century of expansion. Read this article for more information.
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