30 by 30: conserve 30% of land, waters and seas by 2030

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 use case, with connectivity tools such as Circuitscape.