The area of land and water with formal protections for biodiversity has increased by less than 0.5 percent since 2020, leaving the world far short of its goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030.
“Some progress has been made over the past four years, but we are not moving far enough or fast enough. » Inger Andersensaid the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program in a press release.
In 2022, countries agreed to a historic agreement to end biodiversity loss at the COP15 summit in Montreal, pledging to establish formal protections for 30 percent of all land and inland waters and 30 percent of oceans by the end of the decade. This was considered the minimum amount of protection necessary to prevent the extinction of ecosystems around the world, and would require roughly doubling the area of protected land and tripling marine protected areas.
Now, with countries coming together for COP16 Biodiversity Summit in Colombia, official update clearly shows the world is far behind »30 by 30” aim.
Currently, 17.6 percent of land and inland waters and 8.4 percent of oceans are formally protected, according to a count by the United Nations Environment Program and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This leaves a space on land the combined size of Brazil and Australia, and the sea still needs a protected area the size of the Indian Ocean to achieve this goal.
There are other issues beyond the total area protected. A third of areas considered most important for biodiversity have no formal protection, and protected areas do not cover some of them. types of ecosystemsespecially in the depths of the ocean. Few protected areas are connected to each other, and only a fraction have been assessed whether protections work.
This “lays bare the reality of global inaction,” says Brian O’Donnell at the Campaign for Nature, a non-profit environmental organization. “To remedy this situation, governments must treat the biodiversity crisis as an emergency. »
Other reports from the COP16 summit also highlighted the dire state of biodiversity. For example, the world’s first assessment of tree biodiversity, 38 percent of species are threatened with extinction. As the meeting continues until the end of this week, countries are also expected to make new pledges regarding protected areas and conservation funding.