UK joins 50 nations in pledge to protect 30 per cent of land and oceans by 2030

The UK has joined more than 50 other nations in vowing to protect 30 per cent of the Earth's land and ocean by the end of the decade in a bid to halt devastating rates of biodiversity loss.

The governments pledged to deliver the shared nature protection goal at the One Planet Summit hosted by France, the UN, and the World Bank yesterday, as they united to launch a new 'High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People'.

Japan, Pakistan, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, Canada, and Mexico were also among the nations that have endorsed the 30 per cent goal, which is expected to become the centrepiece of a landmark Paris-style UN agreement on nature to be finalised at the UN COP15 biodiversity summit in China, which is currently slated to take place in May.

Wildlife populations have plummeted nearly 70 per cent in less than 50 years due to human activity, and scientists have warned that urgent efforts to restore and protect nature and biodiversity are required to prevent further destruction of ecosystems that support human life.  

­The UK is set to co-chair the High Ambition Coalition alongside Costa Rica and France. The UK's Minister of State for Pacific and the Environment, Lord Zac Goldsmith, said the country was "absolutely committed to leading the fight against biodiversity loss" as the co-host of the COP26 Climate Summit taking place in Glasgow in November.

"We have an enormous opportunity at this year's [UN COP15] Biodiversity Conference in China to forge an agreement to protect at least 30 per cent of the world's land and ocean by 2030," he said. "I am hopeful our joint ambition will curb the global decline of the natural environment, so vital to the survival of our planet."

The One Planet Summit talks are a precursor for critical negotiations set to take place at the COP15 conference in Kunming, China, which was posponed last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The '30 by 30' commitment endorsed by the new group of nation states is expected to form the headline target for a landmark treaty being sought at the conference, after the UN settled on the target in its draft proposals.

Costa Rica's minister for environment and energy Andrea Meza said he hoped more countries would join the High Ambition Coalition in the run up to the COP25 Biodiversity Summit.

''Protecting 30 per cent of the planet will undoubtedly improve the quality of life of our citizens, and help us achieve a fair, decarbonised and resilient society," he said. "Healing and restoring nature is a key step towards human wellbeing, creating millions of quality green and blue jobs and fulfilling the 2030 agenda, particularly as part of our sustainable recovery efforts."   

Countries have largely failed to meet the 2020 Aichi targets established at the COP10 biodiversity conference in Japan a decade ago, despite the UN declaring 2011-2020 as the 'decade on biodiversity'. The UK government concedes it has failed to meet 14 out of 20 of the biodiversity targets, although conservation group RSPB claims the country has in fact failed on 17 targets.

And while a clutch of new pledges were announced by countries and organisations as part of the One Planet Summit, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg offered a characteristically damning assessment of the event, which she argued had little in the way of concrete action and therefore risked "locking in decades of further destruction".

LIVE from #OnePlanetSummit in Paris:
Bla bla nature
Bla bla important
Bla bla ambitious
Bla bla green investments
Bla bla great opportunity
Bla bla green growth
Bla bla net zero
Bla bla step up our game
Bla bla hope
Bla bla bla...*

*locking in decades of further destruction https://t.co/veGb4T7kmr

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) January 11, 2021

Yesterday's One Planet Summit comes at the start of a critical year for international climate and environmental action, with a series of major events in the calendar designed to help ramp up ambition to avert excalating threats to the planet.

Speaking at yesterday's summit, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that £3bn of the UK's £11.5bn climate finance budget would go towards protecting nature, adding that biodiversity would be a major focus of the COP26 climate conference the UK is co-hosting this autumn.

"I would like to see a world in which we give real meaning to those Aichi targets that were set so many years ago at Kyoto and I hope that our Chinese colleagues will be pushing that agenda at their Biodiversity Summit in Kunming," he said. "I know that we will be working with colleagues under the auspices of the UN to do that at the COP26 summit in Glasgow."

However, a pledge announced last year by the government to protect 30 per cent of the UK's land by 2030 was met with scepticism by some green groups, who pointed out that much of the land already deemed 'protected' - such as national parks and areas of outstanding beauty - is in poor condition.