The 30 x 30 Conservation Initiative
Explore the biggest current global effort to save planetary biodiversity
30 by 30 (or 30x30) is a worldwide initiative for governments to designate 30% of Earth's land and 30% of oceans and waterways as protected areas by 2030.
In December 2022, 30 by 30 was agreed at the COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global secretariat of the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP), and became a target of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
(Source: 30 by 30 - Wikipedia)
Here are three links to explore 30 x 30.
PBS News Hour report on COP15
The American Case - from Road to 30 and the Center for Western Priorities
The Global Case - Conservation in UNESCO World Heritage sites and National Parks around the world - the challenges of enforcement
COP15 — A big deal
Watch the PBS New Hour’s report on the 2022 COP 15 Biodiversity Conference, at which the historic agreement was made to implement 30 x 30 conservation. Interview with Colin O’Mara from National Wildlife Federation.
The American Case
THE ROAD TO 30 and its sister organization Center for Western Priorities present a range of materials on the 30 x 30 initiative in the American (US) case, including a sophisticated multimedia presentation, citations to scientific studies, and political progress reports.
Recommended starting points:
Progress Toward 30x30 - Lists commitments by national government, states, cities, indigenous peoples, and conservation organizations to the 30 x 30 initiative.
The Road to 30 (arcgis) - An 11-part interactive presentation showcasing 30 x 30 across various public lands agencies.
Progress report: President Biden’s third year on public lands - Recent (Jan 2024) report on the good, the bad, and the incomplete.
Three quarters of the way through his first term in office, the Center for Western Priorities is taking stock of President Joe Biden’s public lands legacy. As we did after the president’s first and second years in office, we’ve chosen to call this report a progress report rather than a report card, as several pieces of the president’s public lands policy are still winding their way through the federal bureaucracy, and his ultimate conservation legacy depends in large part on whether they’re completed in time.
We didn’t pull any punches in last year’s report. While we praised the president for making initial progress toward his 30×30 land protection goal and for signing the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), we warned that implementing the IRA would be a massive challenge for the short-staffed Bureau of Land Management. We raised red flags over the need to complete formal rulemakings to lock in the IRA’s overhaul of America’s oil and gas leasing system. We also noted that several high profile campaigns to protect new national monuments were in limbo.
One year later, we’re pleased to report that the president and his team have addressed many of these criticisms. President Biden made substantial progress toward his conservation goals in 2023 and is on the precipice of being able to claim he is the most consequential first-term conservation president since Teddy Roosevelt.
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The Global Case: UNESCO Sites & National Parks
Designating protected areas is not enough. In the global context, there has to be enforcement against poaching, illegal logging, etc.
Jeff Morgan of Global Conservation focuses on enforcement of protection within UNESCO World Heritage Sites and National Parks in lower and middle-income countries.
Global Conservation’s approach involves working with local conservation authorities – be they government rangers or Indigenous community members – to manage protected areas and enforce laws against poaching, illegal logging, and other unlawful activities. The organization heavily relies on a range of cost-effective technologies, such as satellite imagery, cellular trail cameras, marine radars, and drones, to enhance protection. They term this suite of tools “Global Park Defense.”
Here is an in-depth interview with him, published by Mongabay:
Targeting 3% of protected areas could accelerate progress on 30x30 goals
The problem
Over the past twenty years, we have lost millions of acres of intact tropical forests to cattle ranching, palm oil, soybean and corn, coca cultivation, and timber plantations, mining, urbanization, and other crops. Often, national parks are being cleared in developing countries without rule of law or proper enforcement.
The solution?
There are a number of critical consumer technologies we use. Most national parks have no budget for military gear, and we must focus on low-cost consumer solutions for communications, surveillance, satellite monitoring, etc.
Cellular trailcams, marine radars and drones are critical for real-time 24/7 protection of endangered national parks. Recently, a drone monitoring a marine protected area led to 33 people being held and a number of them prosecuted in a single day.
Without trailcams, marine radars and drones most national parks have no idea how many illegal actors are entering and actively destroying the park with snares, illegal logging, hunting, and clearing and burning park lands.
But there’s a qualification
While technology and systems are all well and good, without the full support of the communities, Indigenous Peoples, farmers and ranchers, local villages and towns around the national parks, real long-term protection is not possible.
Read more and watch two embedded short video case studies.
(Source: Mongabay is a nonprofit environmental science and conservation news platform that produces original reporting in English, Indonesian, Spanish, French, Hindi, and Brazilian Portuguese by leveraging over 800 correspondents in some 70 countries. They are dedicated to evidence-driven objective journalism.)
