NEWS
To keep the planet flourishing,
30% of Earth needs protection
by 2030
The move would safeguard biodiversity, slow extinctions,
and help maintain a steady climate, a leading group of conservationists say.
Emma Marris
Reprinted From: https://on.natgeo.com/2IJ6YZP
T
his week (31 January 2019), a United
Nations working group responded
to a joint statement posted online
in December by some of the world’s larg-
est conservation organizations calling for
30 percent of the planet to be managed
for nature by 2030—and for half the plan-
et to be protected by 2050. But exactly
what counts as “protected”—and how
countries can reach those goals—is still
up for debate.
Conservationists say these high levels of
protection are necessary to safeguard
benefits that humans derive from na-
ture—such as the filtration of drinking
water and storage of carbon that would
otherwise increase global warming. The
areas are also needed to prevent mas-
sive loss of species.
Humans and their domestic animals are
squeezing the rest of life on Earth to the
margins. Today, only four percent of the
world’s mammals, by weight, are wild.
The other 96 percent are our livestock
and ourselves. Since 1970, populations
of wild mammals, birds, fish, and am-
phibians have, on average, declined by
60 percent.
Habitat loss is widely regarded as the
top cause of species extinction around
the world and these dramatic population
declines are a red flag that many species
are on thin ice—but the good news is
that there is still time to save most spe-
cies. The International Union for Conser-
vation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened
Species lists 872 species as extinct, but a
whopping 26,500 species as threatened
with extinction. To save those species,
their homes and the other species with
which they depend must be protected—
and quickly.
“We’ve got a really tight clock,” says Bri-
an O’Donnell, director of the Wyss Cam-
paign for Nature, based in Durango, CO,
who advocates globally for more conser-
11
vation areas. “Every year we wait, we put
more species in peril.”
The call is part of a process of setting
global environmental targets organized
by the Conference of the Parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity. Ne-
gotiations on the specifics of the target
will continue until a meeting in Beijing in
October 2020.
The targets will replace and go beyond
the “Aichi Biodiversity Targets,” which
were set in 2011 and are supposed to
be reached by 2020. Among them is a
goal of protecting 17 percent of terres-
trial and inland water, and 10 percent of
coastal and marine areas.
Those goals are still within reach. As of
2018, 14.9 percent of the Earth’s land
surface and 7.3 percent of the world’s
oceans are formally protected.
Signatories of the 30 percent by 2030 call
posted this week include BirdLife Inter-
national, Conservation International, the
National Geographic Society, the Natu-
ral Resources Defense Council, the Na-
ture Conservancy, and nine other non-
governmental organizations. Most see
the 2030 target as a stepping stone on
the way to an even more ambitious goal:
conserving half of the planet by 2050.
Calls to protect half the Earth date back
to the 1970's, but the concept has gained
momentum in recent years thanks to the
2009 founding of the Nature Needs Half
movement and the 2016 publication of
eminent naturalist E.O. Wilson’s book
Half Earth.
“There has been a great convergence of
thought in terms of people thinking on
a bigger scale,” says Jonathan Baillie,
executive vice president and chief scien-
tist at the National Geographic Society,
based in Washington D.C. “It is very rare
to get all the major conservation organi-
zations to agree to one thing.”
Supporters say that having an ambitious
and clear target may help the crisis of
biodiversity loss get the attention it de-
serves from governments and private in-
stitutions. In recent years, concern over
climate change has captured more at-
tention.
O’Donnell says that at the latest meet-
ing on the Convention on Biodiversity
country’s environment ministers were
the highest ranking officials attending,
and many of those only stayed for part
of the meeting. In contrast, meetings of
the Paris Climate Accord are attended
by presidents and prime ministers. At
the same time, the climate talks receive
far more media and public attention. But
the issue of saving biodiversity “needs
to be elevated among global leaders,”
O’Donnell says.
Including indigenous people
Some observers are waiting to hear more
details before they support the idea.
The call to protect 30 percent of the Earth
“alarmed” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on
the rights of indigenous peoples, based
in Baguio City, Philippines. Tauli-Corpuz
was one of the authors of a 2018 report
criticizing conservation organizations for
kicking indigenous people off their tra-
ditional lands to create protected areas,
preventing those previously displaced
by parks from reclaiming their lands, or
aggressively policing their behavior and
harming their livelihoods by prohibiting
farming or hunting.
Conservationists increasingly acknowl-
edge the rights of indigenous people
to their lands, and even point to the
fact that land controlled by indigenous
people is often much better cared for,
from a biodiversity perspective, than
Grassroots
Vol 19
No 1
March 2019