Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
March 15, 2021
Secretary Haaland has been at the forefront of efforts to conserve at least 30 percent of the land and ocean in the United States by 2030. Prior to her nomination, Sec. Haaland was the lead sponsor of a resolution supporting the 30x30 goal and served as an honorary member of the Campaign for Nature’s Global Steering Committee, which advocates for the 30x30 target at the global level.
March 12, 2021
Representative Deb Haaland, who is expected to be sworn in as President Biden’s new secretary of the interior next week, already faces a pressing deadline. Under the wide-ranging executive order on climate change that Biden signed during his first full week in office, the interior secretary has until the end of April to recommend steps that the United States should take “to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.”
The goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030—known as “30 by 30”—is the latest iteration of a longstanding conservation pipe dream, but Biden is not the only world leader now taking it seriously. Thanks in part to a $1 billion campaign funded by Swiss medical technology entrepreneur Hansjörg Wyss and endorsed by the National Geographic Society and the Nature Conservancy, the 30 by 30 goal was formally adopted in January by the newly formed High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, which includes more than 50 countries from six continents. The coalition members, led by the United Kingdom, Costa Rica and France, are urging their fellow signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity to embrace the target, too.
March 7, 2021
The recent horrors in Texas, as millions went without electricity and water during a historic winter storm and cold snap, remind us of the ticking time bomb that is our nation’s aging infrastructure. In the early 20th century, we made bold investments in our infrastructure that powered our success, and our continued prosperity depends upon our ability to innovate and adapt. Yet we have failed to invest for decades, leading to the American Society of Civil Engineers consistently giving America’s infrastructure C-minus to D-plus marks.
As climate change brings more frequent and intense weather events, our infrastructure will continue to face challenges it was not built to withstand. The most vulnerable among us will suffer disproportionately. If this is to be a time of equitable renewal amid a global pandemic, then we must meet this once-in-a-generation opportunity to address our crumbling infrastructure, climate change and social equity with a natural solution.
March 6, 2021
Too much of the chaos and tragedy that our world is experiencing is a consequence of our broken relationship with nature.
A virus has spilled over from wildlife to humans, causing a catastrophic global pandemic. Climate change is fueling weather events that are unprecedented in scale and devastation. From wildfires in the United States, Australia, the Amazon and the Arctic, to dangerous and record-breaking winter storms in Texas.
There is no easy cure for what ails the environment. No silver bullet can restore the natural world overnight. What we know is that for our planet to remain livable over the long-term, it is going to take thousands of place-based conservation efforts, led by Indigenous peoples and local communities who oversee the most healthy, biodiverse and intact lands and waters left on Earth.
February 28, 2021
Tucked inside President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad are three paragraphs calling for recommendations to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Scientists have championed the 30x30 initiative globally for years to protect biodiversity and mitigate climate change impacts, but only now is the effort gaining administration attention.
“Over the coming months, Interior will evaluate how to best measure and assess the country’s progress toward the 30x30 goal, to properly account for the many innovative and effective ways that communities are conserving their lands and waters for current and future generations,” according to a Department of the Interior fact sheet issued on January 27.
Calling the goals “the most ambitious conservation agenda in at least the past century,” outdoor industry companies, including Burton, Columbia, L.L. Bean, New Balance, Orvis, Patagonia, The North Face, Keen and Smartwool, co-signed a letter applauding the Biden administration’s 30x30 goal.
February 24, 2021
On Jan. 27, President Biden launched an effort to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by the year 2030. It’s a big, bold goal, fitting our uniquely perilous moment. Experts say protecting an interconnected network of lands and waters will give us the best chance at curbing the worst effects of climate change; adapting to the shifts already happening; preserving wild nature amid an ongoing extinction crisis; and ensuring communities have access to clean air, water and outdoor spaces.
Below are some key facts and figures to help us wrap our minds around the challenges ahead—and also the rare opportunities now facing us.
February 19, 2021
Today marks the U.S.’s official reinstatement into the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden rejoined hours after his inauguration on January 20, 2021. As the U.S rejoins the world in this historic climate accord, the Campaign for Nature has issued the following statement:
Enric Sala, Explorer in Residence, National Geographic and the author of the award winning book The Nature of Nature, Why We Need the Wild. @enric_sala
“Today marks a new beginning for the U.S. It is an opportunity to reset its ambitions and to reestablish its leadership on the global stage in combating climate change. This move, along with the Biden administration’s signal to set the United States on a path to conserve 30% of the U.S – land and at sea – by 2030 (30x30), demonstrates that the country is prepared to lead on the two largest crises facing our planet.”
February 17, 2021
It was an executive order that made waves in environmental circles: after only a week in office, President Joe Biden pledged to preserve 30% of US lands and waters by 2030.
The so-called 30 by 30 conservation goal has already met with bipartisan support in Congress, and it aligns with science-based global preservation targets to reach an eventual target of 50% by 2050.
So which US areas might be at the top of the list? Environmentalists have a few ideas.
January 29, 2021
In an open letter, 450 elected officials from all around the U.S. support President Biden’s Executive Order action this week to protect 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. The officials hope that the president will lead a swift and aggressive campaign to combat global warming and the extinction crisis through conserving land and ocean spaces for the benefit of nature. Biden has also pledged to reverse a number of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks, many of which reduced protections for key public lands and infringed on Indigenous sovereignty.
Why This Matters: As this letter makes clear, parks and access to nature are important to Americans across the country – in red and blue states. During his time in office, Trump rolled back protections for countless public lands, including areas like Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments in Utah, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The rollbacks, meant to clear the way for development, largely failed to attract buyers in Alaska, but fossil fuel companies bought up enough land in the Western U.S. at the end of the Trump administration to continue oil drilling for years.
January 27, 2021
Biden took the next leap in pursuing his climate agenda Wednesday, signing the latest in a spate of environment-focused executive orders. One of the most ambitious goals buried in the order he put forward is to conserve nearly a third of US land and ocean waters by 2030.
Currently, only 12 percent of the country’s land and 26 percent of its oceans are protected, according to a 2018 report by the Center for American Progress. This was achieved by slowly expanding protected areas over the past few decades — until former President Trump took office. In his first year, his administration dramatically shrank two Utah monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — the largest removal of federal land from protection in US history, according to the New York Times. Now the Biden administration will have to quickly reverse course to meet the new goal.
January 27, 2021
In an executive order issued on January 27 to address the climate crisis, President Joe Biden ordered a pause on new oil and gas leases on public lands and created a White House office of environmental justice. He also quietly committed his administration to an ambitious conservation goal—to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and coastal seas by 2030.
That target, referred to as “30 by 30” by the conservation community, is backed by scientists who argue that reaching it is critical both to fighting climate change and to protecting the estimated one million species at risk of going extinct.
The U.S. is currently conserving around 26 percent of its coastal waters but only about 12 percent of its land in a largely natural state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
To reach the 30 by 30 target will require conserving an additional area twice the size of Texas, more than 440 million acres, within the next 10 years. The White House has yet to specify who will oversee the initiative at the federal level and which lands and waterways might be prioritized
January 27, 2021
Today's announcement by President Biden is a win for the people of the United States and the rest of the world, the environment, and the economy. Only by protecting the earth's climate and biodiversity can we truly be on a path to an inclusive and prosperous future for humanity.
By promising to set the United States on a path to conserve 30% of the U.S by 2030 (30x30) – on land and at sea – President Biden has proposed the most ambitious conservation agenda of any president in American history. Such vision addresses the scale of the challenges facing our climate and the natural world. Only by rapidly accelerating the pace of conservation will we stand a chance to slow the warming of our planet and prevent a climate catastrophe, and to reverse the loss of biodiversity, which many experts have warned is the beginning of a Sixth Mass Extinction and the collapse of humanity’s life support system.
January 21, 2021
President Joe Biden returned the United States to the worldwide fight to slow global warming in one of his first official acts Wednesday and immediately launched a series of climate-friendly efforts that would transform how Americans drive and get their power.
“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself,” Biden said in his inaugural address. “A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear now.”
Biden signed an executive order rejoining the Paris climate accord within hours of taking the oath of office, fulfilling a campaign pledge. The move undoes the U.S. withdrawal ordered by predecessor Donald Trump, who belittled the science behind climate efforts, loosened regulations on heat-trapping oil, gas and coal emissions, and spurred oil and gas leasing in pristine Arctic tundra and other wilderness.
December 21, 2020
To slow extinctions and climate change, President-elect Joe Biden has embraced a plan to conserve 30 percent of U.S. land and 30 percent of its ocean waters by 2030. It is perhaps the most ambitious commitment to conservation by a U.S. president. How he proceeds will determine whether he unites or further divides Americans in a pivotal decade for the planet.
The plan is known as “30 by 30.” Behind the catchy phrase is a simple, scientifically informed belief that conserving 30 percent of the planet’s land and 30 percent of its water is required to protect roughly 75 percent of Earth’s species and slow climate change by storing carbon in plants and soil. In the words of a former interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, 30 by 30 is “a kind of synthesizing, consolidating, organizing possibility.”
December 17, 2020
The Campaign for Nature has issued the following responses:
Director of Campaign for Nature, Brian O’Donnell said:
“Representative Deb Haaland is an outstanding pick to lead the Department of the Interior. She has been a leader in the Congress in protecting lands and wildlife and advancing equity and social justice. This is a proud day for the United States. A department that has disenfranchised Indigenous people and dispossessed them of their territories throughout its history will now be run by an Indigenous woman. Her nomination won’t right the wrongs of the past, but it is a step forward that is long overdue.”
