---
id: mandates/thirty-by-thirty
about:
  label: '30 by 30: conserve 30% of land, waters and seas by 2030'
  description: >-
    Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted
    under the Convention on Biological Diversity: by 2030 at least 30 per cent
    of land, inland waters and coastal and marine areas effectively conserved
    through protected areas and other area-based measures.
  tags:
    - biodiversity
    - protected areas
    - conservation
    - global target
    - 2030
mandate:
  issued_by: Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity
  binds: 'the Parties to the Convention, that is almost every country'
  by: 2030
  homepage: 'https://www.cbd.int/gbf/targets/3'
domains:
  - ecology
  - places
relations:
  - predicate: raises
    target: questions/land-use-change
    note: >-
      which land counts, where the gaps are, and what a change of use does to
      coverage
  - predicate: measured_with
    target: data-sources/protected-planet
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: Target 3
      url: 'https://www.cbd.int/gbf/targets/3'
    - title: >-
        Research shows we're surprisingly close to conserving 30% of the world's
        land | EurekAlert!
      url: 'https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1147778'
    - title: >-
        Global conservation area coverage substantially exceeds current
        estimates (Nature, 14 October 2026)
      url: 'https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11157-4'
  created: '2026-10-18'
  reviewed: '2026-10-18'
  reviewed_by: >-
    Claude, from the sources listed; the Nature paper itself was not read, only
    its press release
  status: draft
---
Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework asks that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognising indigenous and traditional territories where applicable. The Secretariat's guidance note adds that protected areas and these other measures can range from strictly protected land to areas with sustainable use consistent with conservation.

The question the target raises is a counting question before it is a conservation one: what counts, and how much of it is there? Protected Planet, the official record, reported in October 2026 that protected areas and other measures covered 17.58 per cent of land and inland waters. A study published in Nature on 14 October 2026, led by the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent with the Institute of Zoology and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, combined the global record with national datasets and put the figure at 26.8 per cent, while cautioning that grasslands and shrublands remain poorly covered and that area alone is not enough: the target also asks that the areas be effective, connected and fairly governed.

For the person with this mandate, the modelling work is spatial: which areas exist in national records but not the global one, where the network has gaps by habitat type, how connected the pieces are, and what a proposed change of land use would do to coverage and connectivity. The data starts at Protected Planet and the national conservation registers; the models are those of the [land use](/questions/land-use-change/) use case, with connectivity tools such as [Circuitscape](/engines/circuitscape/).