Setting aside 30% of the planet’s surface for conservation by 2030, otherwise known as ’30×30′, has perhaps become today’s most resounding catchphrase in global conservationist circles. As of July 2022, more than 100 countries have joined the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC), a group of states rallying behind the 30×30 target, including all G10 countries. The campaign is being driven by conservation foundations and affiliated scientists as well as corporations and financial institutions advocating for a global new deal for nature.
Put simply, the stated ambition of their call is to link the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in a bid to combine terrestrial and marine biodiversity protection with climate action under a single umbrella. There is now a strong expectation that 30×30 might be formally endorsed when the parties to the CBD convene to adopt a post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) in Montreal in December 2022.
Whether this constitutes a realistic target remains highly uncertain. Its apparent simplicity belies a lack of agreement on the degree of protection (or exclusion) that is called for, and whether it should be applied by all countries equally. Almost all aspirational targets set by governments for the environment in the past have failed. Indeed, the Aichi targets, agreed to by the CBD in 2010, set the ambition of creating 10% marine protected area (MPA) coverage by 2020.
Globally, this target has nearly been achieved (8%), but the diversity of outcomes between countries and contexts hardly supports ramping up more of the same. Issues of effective implementation or appropriate siting of MPAs seem to have been overlooked. Making the new target even more likely to fail is that some large coastal countries have not joined the HAC, including Brazil, China, Russia and Indonesia. However, beyond the question of how feasible it is, there are urgent questions over the desirability of the 30×30 campaign as well. This is particularly important from the perspective of large numbers of small-scale fishers for whom rapidly enlarging MPAs could be threatening to their livelihoods.
The following conversation between Felix Mallin and Hugh Govan unpacks some of the implications of a global 30% target for the oceans and what might be at stake for small-scale fishers and other coastal communities in terms of access and control over marine resources.