Delivering on Biden’s 2030 Conservation Commitment

In a new working paper, Global Development Policy (GDP) Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Blake Alexander Simmons, along with Christoph Nolte, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University and Jennifer McGowan, Decision Scientist and Spatial Planner at The Nature Conservancy, discuss the ambitious conservation commitment outlined in President Joe Biden’s latest executive order and the steps needed to turn this promise into effective and equitable conservation actions.

On Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order committing the United States to “the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and oceans by 2030.” This ambitious conservation target signals a promising direction for biodiversity in the United States.  

However, this ‘30×30’ target remains vague in its biodiversity objectives, actions, and implementation strategies. Biodiversity urgently needs effective conservation action, but expectations of where and what this 30 percent target applies to remain ambiguous. Achieving different objectives will require different strategies and, in combination with the associated costs of implementation, will lead to different priority areas for conservation actions.

In the paper, the authors illustrate what the 30 percent target could look like across four objectives reflective of the ambitious goals outlined in the executive order. They generated expansions of the existing terrestrial protected area network guided by these different objectives and examined the trade-offs in costs, ecosystem representation, and climate mitigation potential between each.

They found little congruence in priority areas across objectives, emphasizing just how crucial it will be for the incoming administration to develop clear objectives and establish appropriate performance metrics from the outset to maximize conservation and climate outcomes to support the 30×30 target.  

The paper outlines important considerations that must guide the Biden administration’s upcoming conservation strategies in order to ensure meaningful conservation outcomes can be achieved in the next decade, including (1) setting immediate and clear objectives; (2) protecting what’s threatened and restoring where there’s opportunity; (3) establishing performance metrics to evaluate progress; and (4) capitalizing on a diverse suite of policy instruments for protection. The authors argue that delivering on Biden’s 30×30 commitment will be challenging, but several of these challenges can be overcome using the systematic conservation planning framework outlined in the paper.

Simmons, Nolte and McGowan urge the new administration to seize this opportunity to advance international conservation efforts and deliver smart national solutions to the escalating biodiversity and climate crises.