I’m a scientist by training. I studied the global migration each year of choruses of songbirds across hemispheres. But these magnificent creatures have, at least in North America, declined by around a third since I completed my doctorate in 1996.
To me, such declines are personal. Since the year I was born — 1970 — the planet has lost 69% of wildlife and 83% of freshwater biodiversity, all “on my watch.” Now as an executive at one of the world’s largest conservation organizations — The Nature Conservancy — I’m thinking less about the data and more about the drive for action to address the loss of nature.
As at the recent climate conference in Egypt, the world will be tested this week in Montreal at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP 15. Will we have the drive to take action to solve the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss?
The science is clear, and data directs us to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land, freshwater, and oceans by 2030 or risk a meltdown of the services nature provides us. This “30x30” goal is a major focus of the international negotiations in Montreal and a global imperative. Nature makes up more than one-third of the mitigation needed in the face of the climate crisis, and protecting 30% — through a range of private, public, and Indigenous stewardship — is in our social, cultural, and economic best interests.
It’s easy to become jaded, if not outright depressed. In 2010, the world set decadal goals for nature protection known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. We missed every single one. We must do better.
And I do hold hope that we will.
Many high-ambition nations are ready to change the way the Earth’s land, ocean, and freshwater resources are managed and protect our remaining intact ecosystems, while mainstreaming sustainable use of resources across the rest of their territories. The governments of Gabon, Mongolia, and Belize, for example, have pledged to protect and effectively manage 30% of their territories that include representative ecosystems. They are also working with TNC and others’ support to permanently finance the future of nature for both climate and biodiversity.
At the organization level, some nonprofits are collaborating in unprecedented ways. The Enduring Earth collaboration, for example, brings World Wildlife Fund, The Pew Charitable Trusts, ZOMALAB, and TNC together to deliver permanent financing for systems of conservation areas and their partners, and rights holders in places like the Northwest Territories in Canada, the Eastern Tropical Pacific, and Colombia.
Global businesses are also realizing they need not just to make climate commitments, but bold nature commitments to support the 30x30 goal as a way of doing business.
There are multiple pathways to 30x30. It’s not only about creating public parks, but also about private conservation efforts — from private reserves to conservation easements to sustainable management, such as committed grazing and ranching lands that maintain and restore ecosystems.
Indigenous territories are the bellwether of our planet’s future. Indigenous communities collectively manage — based on millennia of traditions — more than one-quarter of the world’s lands, 17% of all forest carbon, and vast stretches of freshwater and marine habitats. If 30x30 respects and recognizes the voices, choices, and actions of Indigenous peoples and local communities, those traditions and practices can help ensure nature endures.
These facts all give me hope that 30x30 is doable. But all this has a cost. TNC and research partners estimate it would take around $700 billion annually to reverse the biodiversity crisis and facilitate a nature-positive transformation across all sectors — a daunting figure on paper, until you consider that in reality, it represents less than 1% of annual global GDP.
Nature finance is achievable if we innovate. TNC recently announced a financial deal to enable the government of Barbados to convert a portion of its COVID-exacerbated debt to free up $50 million for marine conservation, in support of the nation’s commitment to conserve 30% of its ocean and sustainably develop its blue economy. And in June, WWF and the Enduring Earth collaboration announced a significant conservation agreement in Colombia that will protect 32 million hectares of land and sea.
Strategies such as these unlock funds at the scale needed to face the biodiversity and climate crises in support of both people and nature.
Data points us to how much we must conserve and what it will cost. Yet as an ornithologist once obsessed with data, I now place more emphasis on ensuring nations and global citizens have the drive to create a future with nature in it.