50 | New Scientist | 16 April 2022Much of Earth’s most biodiverse
land surface is already extremely
well-protected – it just isn’t formally
recognised as such. Across the world,
from the Arctic to the South Pacific
Ocean, some 80 per cent of Earth’s
remaining biodiversity is thought to
be in territories managed and owned
by Indigenous peoples.
About 7 per cent of the land listed in
the World Database of Protected Areas
maintained by the International Union
for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
and the United Nations Environment
Programme is Indigenous, but another
17 per cent of Earth’s surface is
owned, occupied or managed by
Indigenous people and local
communities, says Eric Dinerstein,
former chief scientist at WWF.
“Indigenous groups do a better
job of protecting biodiversity than
governments do,” he says. If you add
it all up, he says, we have arguably
already exceeded the crucial target
of protecting 30 per cent of Earth’s
land surface (see main story).
The problem is that Indigenous
land claims often aren’t recognised
by governments. “We should be
doing everything we can to finance
and empower Indigenous groups to
have sovereignty over their lands,”
says Dinerstein. “That would be the
cheapest thing to do by far, and have
the biggest effect.”
Indigenous people are often
under-represented and marginalisedat international environmental
summits. At last year’s IUCN World
Conservation Congress in Marseilles,
France, an officially organised group of
Indigenous communities participated
for the first time. At the COP26
climate talks in Glasgow, UK, though,
they were once again pushed to the
sidelines.
Biodiversity negotiations have
traditionally been more inclusive.
Since 1996, the International
Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity has
had a seat at the negotiating table,
and a spokesperson for the Convention
on Biological Diversity says that
it is “committed to the effective
participation of Indigenous peoples...
in recognition of their fundamental
role in the successful implementation
of the new framework”.
Indigenous peoples’ participation
was also a key part of the Aichi
Biodiversity Targets, which ran from
2010 to 2020. Along with all the
others, that target was missed, though
there were some isolated wins:
in 2018, for example, Costa Rica
enshrined a mechanism to consult its
Indigenous groups over any action that
would affect them. Brian O’Donnell
at the Campaign for Nature says that
negotiations have made progress on
Indigenous rights, but there is still
room for improvement. And of course,
as many Indigenous people know only
too well, just because a deal is signed
doesn’t mean it will be honoured.Indigenous protectors
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A ranger patrols
the Nairi-Awari
Indigenous territory in
Costa Rica in 2021readiness of higher-income countries to
compensate biodiversity-rich lower-income
countries for doing much of the heavy lifting.
“It’s all about the money,” says Woodley.
Some money does already flow. The US aid
budget, for example, helps to fund Brazil’s
biodiversity conservation work in the Amazon
rainforest to the tune of $80 million over
10 years. In 2015, the Seychelles had some of
its debt written off in exchange for protecting
its sensitive marine environments. But
auguries from other multilateral international
negotiations aren’t good. At the 2015 Paris
climate talks, richer nations agreed to pay
poorer ones $100 billion a year to mitigate the
effects of climate change. The money has yet to
appear in full. “When, precisely, are we peoples
of the south going to be compensated for these
ravages that have been caused by the northern
hemisphere?” asked Madagascar’s foreign
minister, Djacoba Liva Tehindrazanarivelo,
at the recent One Ocean Summit in Brest,
France. “Give us our money back.”
If some agreement over financing can be
reached, there is just about enough pristine
nature available to protect 30 per cent, says
Woodley. According to Dinerstein, now at the
Resolve non-governmental organisation in
Washington DC, about half of the land surface
is either untouched or relatively untouched
by human influence, above all in the Sahara
desert, the Amazon basin, the Australian
outback and the tundra and boreal forests
of the Arctic (see map, right). When you add
in areas home to Indigenous peoples that are
generally high in biodiversity (see “Indigenous
protectors”, left), we might even have technically
reached the 30-by-30 target already.
What 30 by 30 would end up meaning,
however, is open. It is currently framed as
a global goal, but could become a series of
national ones, with each country setting
aside 30 per cent of its land and sea area. If so,
extensive ecological restoration will have to
be carried out in nations such as the UK that
have little intact biodiversity left, says Leadley.
But for all the pitfalls, there is growing
oomph behind 30 by 30. More than 100
nations, including many low-income ones,
have joined either the High Ambition Coalition
for Nature and People, which is committed to
30 by 30 on land and sea, or the Global Ocean
Alliance for 30 by 30 at sea, or both. “We’re
excited that momentum is actually growing
for this target,” says O’Donnell. That said, some
large countries housing a lot of biodiversity,
including Brazil, China, Russia, Indonesia
and the US, have yet to sign up.
But while it seems obvious that protecting
large segments of Earth’s surface will also
safeguard biodiversity, there is more to it than
brute numbers. For a start, protecting an area