Wyss Campaign for Nature Update: Momentum Towards 30x30
Zamora Chinchipe Provincial Reserve, Ecuador | Photo credit: Fabián Rodas López, Nature and Culture International
There are almost daily reminders that we need to fundamentally reorient our relationship with nature. One million plant and animal species are currently threatened with extinction. Already two-thirds of Earth’s ocean and three-quarters of its lands have been significantly altered by human development. And scientists continue sounding the alarms that we are in the midst of an ongoing mass extinction event of our own making.
But there’s good news on the horizon for the fate of nature. Right now, nations across the planet are coalescing around a strategy to address the extinction crisis and to rapidly slow the loss of natural places by embracing a global goal to protect 30 percent of the planet’s lands and ocean by 2030 (30x30).
The plan to protect 30x30 is being spearheaded by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (informally called the HAC), a growing coalition of nearly 70 countries, chaired by Costa Rica, France, and the United Kingdom. The HAC and its member nations are building global momentum to safeguard nature and humanity’s future: “Our future depends on preventing the collapse of the natural systems that provide our food, clean water, clean air and stable climate. In order to preserve these services, we must protect enough of the natural world to sustain them.”
Just last week, the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity released a first draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework – a policy document that, once agreed to by the 196 states that are party to the Convention, will guide international biodiversity policy and implementation through 2030 to ensure that the international community rises to the challenge. Target 3 of the draft plan heeds the call of scientists who’ve said that we need to protect at least 30x30, en route to safeguarding half of the Earth’s lands and ocean to reduce extinction threats.
Target 3. Ensure that at least 30 per cent globally of land areas and of sea areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and its contributions to people, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes.
Equally significant, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s draft plan rightfully acknowledges Indigenous Peoples and local communities as crucial partners in the fight to save nature, making clear that the principle of free, prior, and informed consent must guide protections and management of lands and waters.
Target 20. Ensure that relevant knowledge, including the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous peoples and local communities with their free, prior, and informed consent, guides… decision-making for the effective management of biodiversity, enabling monitoring, and by promoting awareness, education and research.
Target 21. Ensure equitable and effective participation in decision-making related to biodiversity by indigenous peoples and local communities, and respect their rights over lands, territories and resources, as well as by women and girls, and youth.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities oversee lands and waters holding much of the planet’s remaining biodiversity; the global community will never succeed in addressing the nature crisis without Indigenous Peoples playing a leading role in the conservation and management of lands they’ve effectively safeguarded since time immemorial.
For our part, the Wyss Campaign for Nature is not waiting to make progress towards 30x30. In just the last few months, the Wyss Campaign for Nature has helped secure millions of acres of new protections in Bolivia, provided a catalytic donation to protect the second largest remaining tropical forest in the Americas, made a $108 million commitment to conserve and restore national parks in Africa, supported the expansion of a large marine protected area in Panama that helped the nation surpass its goal of protecting 30 percent of its marine area, and worked with partners in Australia to protect that nation’s newest national park.
We’re increasingly optimistic that parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will formally establish the 30x30 target when they meet at the COVID-delayed Conference of Parties (likely not until 2022). Until then, we will continue working alongside local communities, Indiginous Peoples, partners in civil society, and government leaders to permanently protect the planet's lands and waters.