2022 has been referred to as a “make-or-break year” for biodiversity conservation. The 30×30 initiative, launched in the U.S. exactly one year ago with Executive Order 14008 and its companion America the Beautiful plan, is one of the latest and largest scientific plans to address climate change and conserve biodiversity.
Since then, experts have been investigating how this conservation commitment can be delivered by 2030. Some have expressed the need for objectives to be clarified, so that a systematic conservation planning framework can be developed to guide the prioritization of both places and actions.
Dreiss, L.M. and Malcom, J.W. 2021. Identifying key federal, state, and private lands strategies for achieving 30× 30 in the United States. Conservation Letters: e12849.
Belote, R.T., Barnett, K., Dietz, M.S., Burkle, L., Jenkins, C.N., Dreiss, L., Aycrigg, J.L. and Aplet, G.H. 2021. Options for prioritizing sites for biodiversity conservation with implications for “30 by 30”. Biological Conservation 264: 109378.
One recent synthesis aims to chart a path on achieving 30×30 goals in the U.S. through aligning biodiversity and ecosystem carbon research with land protection policies at multiple scales. The Protected Areas Database of the U.S. was used to measure imperiled species (a biodiversity metric of species in greatest need of conservation) and ecosystem carbon stores (areas that if disturbed could contribute additional carbon into the atmosphere) for both currently managed areas and ones in need of additional protection.
Analyses show that land areas that are currently protected do not overlap with areas essential for conserving imperiled species and ecosystem carbon stores. For example, reaching 30% protection goal could be achieved by expanding already protected federal lands; however, many biodiversity hotspots (80%) would still lack protection. Additionally, protection varies between states, so new state-level programs could complement federal efforts for private and public land conservation. A key takeaway of this work is that there are a multitude of strategies that could be used to achieve 30×30 targets in the United States, which includes various approaches at the federal, state and local levels.
Another study reiterates the fact that protected areas have not historically been selected with a primary focus on biodiversity conservation. Even within biodiversity conservation prioritization, there are multiple ways to calculate which lands should be protected. Different measures of biodiversity across various scales (from a single site to a community to a given region), along with measures beyond biodiversity, need to be taken into consideration when evaluating areas for biodiversity protection.
Analyses show that different prioritization methods did result in different locations of priority protection areas. Maps of priorities also differed by taxa, including mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. These results reinforce the idea that prioritization sites will depend on not only the method used but also the taxa considered in order to reach the goal of protecting 30% of species habitats by 2030. If sustaining biodiversity and reducing species decline is a priority for conservation, then actions will need to go above designating 30% for protected areas and towards remedying what is putting species at risk. In other words, the 30×30 goals are a good place to start, but definitely are not the ultimate goal for the conservation of biodiversity.
Neither publication suggests that their maps should be used specifically for decision making. Both provide evidence to the fact that further conversations and research are needed to consider all the factors that influence the prioritization of lands and actions needed to deliver on 30×30 goals.
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