Keywords

2.1 Introduction

On a grey morning in December, my WhatsApp suddenly lit up with the message ‘China just gavelled it!! We have GBF!!!’. Four years into the process, and at 3.30 am in Montreal, the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) had finally been agreed by signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Except that it hadn’t, not quite. United Nations decisions need unanimity, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had been holding out for more aid money and a fund separate from the Global Environmental Facility, which DRC government representatives felt would respond better to their needs. China as chair, jumped the gun and overrode DRC’s objections, calling the meeting to an end even before the translators had caught up and most delegates understood what was happening. DRC immediately objected, saying it would not abide by the decision, thereby massively weakening the agreement. Several African countries sided with DRC on a point of principle about the way that the decision was reached: others were bitterly opposed, splitting the continent. A tense 24 hours of negotiations followed before DRC finally agreed that the GBF should be adopted, whilst noting reservations to two of the targets and the GBF was gavelled for a second and final time.

This was a final piece of drama in what had been a long and exhausting negotiation. Even a day or so earlier, such an agreement seemed highly unlikely. I was in Montreal until shortly before the end of the CBD’s fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP-15) in December 2022, and progress had been glacially slow. The meeting began with 700 phrases of the proposed Global Biodiversity Framework, itself only a fairly short statement, still in square brackets, meaning that they needed to be debated and consensus reached. Watching from the rear of the room (non-governmental organisations were not allowed to intervene at this stage), it felt like many delegates were too junior to make decisions on the spot and were simply holding a government line, even where a compromise should have been simple. Delegates argued back and forth about synonyms which meant basically the same thing. Some key issues failed to be resolved, including in particular issues of financial resources.

The GBF is the latest in a series of strategies set by members of the CBD to address biodiversity loss. The final text of the draft GBF contains 23 targets, including amongst others those relating to ecosystem restoration, pesticide reduction, food waste, gender equality, invasive species, financial resources, removal of perverse subsidies and disclosure of impact by companies (CBD, 2022). Like all UN decisions, adherence is largely voluntary and inevitably patchy. But governments look closely at such documents, so that slight changes of wording can have major implications on policies right down to the level of individual sites. Mention of a particular ecosystem, or conservation approach, or related social target, can have a major impact on funding streams, the ways that policies and laws develop and the attitudes of donor and recipient governments. Quantitative targets, with measurable objectives, are often more successful because there is something concrete to measure deliverables against. So, any numerical targets have a particular resonance.

This means that a few judicious words in a UN decision can push a government to change its policies and encourage donor governments and organisations to switch their funding priorities. Results eventually trickle down to the communities, protected area managers and other stakeholders at a very local level. Many of the recipients will have no idea about the work that has gone on to make this happen. Nor do they need to necessarily. However, there are practical reasons why it sometimes seems as if every word in a meeting like COP-15 is hard fought over and why interested governments and non-governmental organisations invest time and money in advocacy, both in the long build-up to these meetings and at such Conference of Parties (COP) itself.

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, COP-15 was already over two years late, making things even more complicated. The twenty-three targets together created a comprehensive and ambitious global strategy. Delegates sat in crowded rooms until late at night, with text projected onto a screen at the front, and they argued about each phrase in turn. There had already been three earlier meetings in 2022 alone to try to agree text. These were held in Geneva, Nairobi and in Montreal immediately before the COP, with little success. Session chairs either dithered or lost their temper, whole delegations walked out over points of principle on more than one occasion. China finally came out with a suggested final text and presented it at the high-level segment of the meeting towards the end of the fortnight and faced with that or nothing countries eventually agreed; such brinkmanship is far from unusual in these negotiations. But the fact that we have a GBF at all, is still a minor miracle.

One particular element of the GBF that is particularly noteworthy is how the language agreed amongst representatives from signatory states and members of the conference on a global level, will influence planning and management activities of protected area and greenspace managers on the ground. The processes by which such decisions are reached; the confusion and realpolitik involved are reported in this chapter from a personal account of the events leading up to the agreement of the GBF.

Particularly controversial, and the main subject of this chapter, is Target three of the GBF. This proposed that 30% of the world’s land and ocean should be in ‘protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures’ by 2030, the so-called 30 × 30 target (CBD, 2020). The target reflects a significant change in attitudes towards natural ecosystems and their values and would have seemed to be a pipe dream even a decade earlier. Yet by the time the meeting kicked off in Montreal, 114 national governments had already signed onto a High Ambition Coalition 30 × 30 target, meaning that even if the GBF had failed to reach agreement—a real possibility—it seemed likely that many of the elements of this particular target would have been carried forward. But it wasn’t an easy ride. Many governments remain deeply sceptical about this target and consensus was driven by years of hard lobbying, both by supportive governments and by NGOs, with presumably many deals and sweeteners offered along the way in terms of aid and support to help the process along. Eventually, it was agreed, with the final—albeit fairly strangulated—text which reads:

Ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognizing indigenous and traditional territories, where applicable, and integrated into wider landscapes, seascapes and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities including over their traditional territories. (CBD, 2022)

Every word and phrase of this agreement is significant, and some remaining ambiguities will continue to be debated for a long time yet. We have considered the implications of individual words and phrases elsewhere (Dudley & Stolton, 2022a). But notwithstanding from the nuances of how it will be interpreted, the GBF already represents an extraordinary set of changes in the way that governments, NGOs and others view the world. These are what will be examined below and nine key elements have been identified as representing significant changes in the philosophy of how we will progress nature conservation in future:

  • The 30% target itself.

  • Specific inclusion of inland waters.

  • Increased ambition for coastal and marine areas, including the high seas.

  • The rise of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs).

  • Inclusion of indigenous and traditional territories in the target.

  • The importance of management effectiveness.

  • Coupled with equitable management.

  • Integration into wider landscapes and seascapes.

  • The rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

All these points have major implications not only for the ways in which we implement the GBF, but for virtually every single other aspect of sustainable development. Some, but not all, are repeated in different ways in other GBF targets.

But first, a reality check, I was, and I still am, very excited about the possibilities opened up by the GBF, which was a rare bit of good news in an otherwise generally dismal year for international politics. We’ve been working on the implications of the 30 × 30 target for the last few years, looking at how it might be put into practice and the tools and approaches available to governments and others (Dudley & Stolton, 2022b). There is a very basic change in the way that civil society is viewing the natural world and alongside all the bad news are some real opportunities for positive progress. But will something like the GBF really make much of a difference? One of the first things I did after returning from Montreal to Wales was to attend our village Christmas party. We live in a biosphere reserve, on the edge of Snowdonia National Park. I was talking with one of my neighbours, a professional ecologist who works as a freelance bird surveyor and found that he scarcely knew that there even was a UN convention dealing with biological diversity. He certainly hadn’t heard of the GBF or of the meeting in Montreal. Many field naturalists hold the same view and tend to sniff about their colleagues who spend their time arguing the minutiae of wording of paper agreements in conference centres around the world.

Previous CBD targets have mainly failed, including the much-vaunted Aichi targets, agreed at a similar meeting in 2010 in Japan, which also concluded with high hopes for the future. I am writing this only a few weeks after the exhilaration of the events in Montreal and the slow and laborious job of putting the conclusions in place hasn’t even begun. At the end of this chapter, I consider some of the practical ways in which the GBF might make a difference. But beforehand, I will run through each of the nine elements above to discuss how the GBF will affect nature conservation in the near future.

2.2 30% of the Planet

Most of the world’s protected area system will have been established during the lifetime of most of the people reading this chapter. The shift from production—or more often potential production—to conservation on such a large scale must be the fastest major change in land use in human history. IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, first proposed that ten per cent of the planet’s land surface might be in protected areas at its World Conservation Congress in Caracas in 1992. Then it seemed naively utopian. Thirty years later we are already at 17% of the land surface of the planet, as noted in Aichi Target 11 set in 2010, which is one of the few Aichi targets to have been at least partially fulfilled. The target was less successful in marine conservation and there were other elements in the target including governance, effectiveness and integration into the landscape/seascape, where progress was slower. Now there is a commitment to set aside 30% and the half earth theory, which argues that we should leave at least half the planet in a more-or-less natural state (Pimm et al., 2018), is gaining increasing acceptance. What has changed?

30 × 30 represents a coming together of many different strands of opinion. On the one hand, there is increasing realisation that unless natural or near-natural areas are deliberately set aside; they are likely to be transformed (Winkler et al., 2021). This is due to the actions of an apparently insatiable set of actors, particularly the food industry, which in some situations still clearly views land clearance as an easier option than the maintenance of the land already under cultivation. Awareness of the role and importance of natural systems has also been increasing. The focus has been expanding from biodiversity, (which for many is not a sufficient reason for such large commitments to conservation), to a much wider range of ecosystem services, including aspects of food and water security, disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation (Stolton & Dudley, 2010). Finally, there is far more support for maintaining land under relatively natural ecosystems than there is for protected areas—national parks, nature reserves and wilderness areas—as being the best or only vehicles for achieving this. It is in large part the recognition of other effective area-based conservation measures that has tipped the balance towards 30 × 30 (Dudley et al., 2018).

2.3 Inland Waters

Freshwater biodiversity is decreasing at almost twice the rate of terrestrial and marine species, and freshwaters are incredibly diverse, with high rates of endemism and equally high levels of threat (Ramsar, 2018). Freshwater conservation biologists were convinced that lumping inland waters in with terrestrial ecosystems means that the former was often forgotten in practice. Even when rivers or lakes occurred inside larger terrestrial protected areas they were often virtually ignored by land and water managers. Adding the phrase ‘inland waters’, which includes freshwaters and also those with high levels of salinity such as the Dead Sea, was seen by a group of NGOs as the clearest way to ensure that these ecosystems were adequately represented in national conservation plans (The Nature Conservancy et al., 2022).

Conservation groups are interpreting the final wording of the target to mean that 30% of terrestrial, 30% of inland waters and 30% of coastal and marine ecosystems should each be included separately within the target; implying that the target applies to 30% of inland waters as well. We will have to wait to see if national governments apply this in practice. But the change signals a wider shift in priorities. It is not so much that freshwaters have been ignored—there are many thousand people working throughout the world on their conservation—but that freshwater concerns have often been treated in isolation from wider conservation messaging and that bringing them into the mainstream is now more and more necessary (Garcia-Moreno et al., 2014).

2.4 Ocean and Marine Areas

The other significant shift in the range of ecosystems targeted was to increase the ambition for conservation of oceans and coastal waters to 30%, from the ten per cent target in Aichi 11. This was perhaps the biggest sticking point within Target three in the negotiations leading up to COP-15, with China particularly reluctant in the light of its huge fishing fleet and appetite for fish. Given China’s pivotal role in chairing this session of the CBD, it seemed more than likely that a compromise might be reached for 30% on land but less for the ocean; in the event the original proposals held.

The final decision indicates two important changes. Firstly, the increased ambition of the target is very significant in itself, but secondly there has also been a gradual shift to include a greater focus on the high seas (Lewis et al., 2017). Here, protection is urgently needed to rebuild dwindling fish stocks and other impacted marine communities but is also much trickier to achieve, due to the need to reach consensus from all countries about conservation of areas beyond national jurisdiction. Given the remoteness of many areas and the existence of huge fishing fleets acting outside the law, it will also be hard to implement even if boundaries are drawn on marine charts. Exactly, how this will play out remains unclear, and we might speculate that several countries signed up without necessarily intending to follow through. There are also large questions about the effectiveness of many marine protected areas, which have been set up with so few controls that it is hard to distinguish them from the rest of the marine environment. At coastal level, there are numerous community-managed initiatives such as locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) (Newell et al., 2019), many long-tested in real conditions. Some of these fall outside the protected area network but are ideally situated to be recognised as OECMs. They are likely to become increasingly important as the 30 × 30 target starts to be implemented, but such approaches are less available on the high seas.

2.5 Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Mechanisms (OECMs)

OECMs are not new exactly but they are newly emergent. The phrase appeared at the last minute in Aichi Target 11, at around 3.00 in the morning when negotiators were exhausted and no-one had the energy to object. And the addition caused quite a lot of consternation; it took almost eight years after the Japan meeting to agree a definition, and governments are now scrambling to catch up. There is still a huge amount of confusion about what OECMs are in practice. The definition was finally settled in late 2018 at the previous CBD Conference of Parties in Sharm el Sheik in Egypt:

A geographically defined area other than a Protected Area, which is governed and managed in ways that achieve positive and sustained long-term outcomes for the in-situ conservation of biodiversity, with associated ecosystem functions and services and where applicable, cultural, spiritual, socio–economic, and other locally relevant values. (CBD, 2018)

This definition covers three main cases:

  • Ancillary conservation—areas delivering in situ conservation as a by-product of management, even though biodiversity conservation is not an objective (e.g. some military training grounds).

  • Secondary conservation—active conservation of an area where biodiversity outcomes are only a secondary management objective (e.g. some conservation corridors).

  • Primary conservation—areas meeting the IUCN definition of a protected area, but where the governance authority (i.e., community, indigenous peoples’ group, religious group, private landowner or company) does not wish the area to be reported as a protected area (IUCN Task Force on OECMs, 2019).

Everyone knows OECM is a horrible acronym, but it is the only term that has official government recognition and for the moment we are stuck with it. In practice, many people refer to ‘protected and conserved areas’ as being equivalent to ‘protected areas and OECMs’ although there is no real agreement as yet, on the scope of a ‘conserved area’ and it is used in a variety of ways.

OECMs are a beguiling prospect for many governments, worried that they don’t have enough land or marine areas to set aside major new national parks or similar but wanting to meet biodiversity goals. The fact that existing management is already maintaining biodiversity means that these uses can continue, removing the usual social and economic objections that often face protected area establishment. Commitments are more about maintaining current patterns of land and water use into the future and monitoring status to make sure that biodiversity (and other) values are maintained. Huge areas of indigenous peoples’ territories could become OECMs in theory, although there are complications as discussed in the next section.

Although OECMs were mentioned by name in Aichi 11, the fact that they hadn’t been defined until near the end of the target period means that few governments tried to apply them in practice. The largest change in the GBF may well be the emergence of OECMs as a potentially huge land-use category within 30 × 30. But this won’t be trouble-free. There are large and justifiable fears that OECMs will be used as a means of greenwashing—designating areas with little biodiversity value in order to make up the numbers—and conversely that they could be used by governments as a further excuse for dispossessing people from their traditional territories. Both conservation and human right groups, therefore, have concerns and some indigenous peoples’ organisations are deeply sceptical. Additionally, and currently less discussed, is the fact that because OECMs are recognised from places that are already successfully conserving biodiversity, meaning that they do not lead to any actual gain in land and water under effective conservation, although they may increase the long-term security of such areas. Questions about whether OECMs could be created, for instance, through restoration policies, have hardly been discussed as yet. Over the next few years, it will become clear whether the OECM concept ends up revolutionising conservation or becomes a slightly irrelevant side-show.

2.6 Indigenous and Traditional Territories

The biggest surprise for Target three in Montreal was the success of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) in introducing a third category into the 30 × 30 target for indigenous territories outside protected areas and OECMs. This was resisted by many developing countries including the European Union but was loudly endorsed by many developing countries, who applauded every intervention that supported the proposal. Conservation NGOs were privately concerned but mainly kept silent. The fears were: (a) that any indigenous territory might be recognised, even if it had no conservation value (IIFB statements suggest this was never the intention) and (b) deciding which territories ‘count’ could take years: it took eight years to agree the OECM definition. The phrase ‘where applicable’ implies that indigenous territories will need to show effective conservation, equitable governance, etc., to meet 30 × 30.

The IIFB argued that the addition was needed because of reluctance amongst many indigenous peoples to being included in any top-down scheme, and fears that, whatever was said at international level, creation of more protected areas or OECMs in their territories will risk further loss of access to land, water and resources. There is also a belief that inclusion as a separate category in Target three will further help gain tenure rights on traditional territories, still the primary concern of many groups. However, there is also a risk that governments will simply ‘recognise’ existing indigenous territories as part of the 30 × 30 package without providing anything more in terms of support or legal safeguards, leaving such areas open to further incursion and degradation. It is clear that 30 × 30 is only going to be possible with the support and active participation of many indigenous peoples (e.g. Fa et al., 2020), and a strong belief amongst conservation groups that this partnership could be mutually beneficial. But it is still too early to say whether the inclusion of a third category will help or hinder this process.

2.7 Effective Conservation

Some of the changes are not so much to do with wording as with emphasis. The words ‘effectively conserved’ appeared identically in Aichi 11 but reappear in the GBF with a greater commitment to implementation, not least due to a constant stream of criticism that says conventional protected areas (often dismissed by critics as ‘fortress conservation’) is not working. A massive growth in ambition for area under protection will bring with it an equally large demand for proof that such areas are delivering the goods. This will perhaps be even more important in the case of OECMs, where the whole definition is based on a perception of effectiveness that will need to be demonstrated.

There are many practical implications. Management effectiveness assessments will need to become a standard part of management and increasingly linked with comprehensive assessment of conservation and social outcomes, i.e., it is not enough to know that areas are being managed well but also that this is having the desired result in terms of ecosystem protection. Even well managed protected areas can fail if outside pressures, including climate change, are too great. Measuring outcomes implies continual monitoring, which can prove expensive and time-consuming, although technology is expanding rapidly with access to more effective satellite data, cheaper camera trap technology, acoustic monitoring, DNA sampling and online tools for identification. Ranger-led monitoring tools such as SMART (Cronin et al., 2021) are also helping to transform monitoring options for managers. Meanwhile agreed management standards—a step beyond assessment of effectiveness—are emerging, including the IUCN Green List (Hockings et al., 2019) and Conservation Assured, a species-based approach with standards already available for tigers, jaguars and river dolphins (e.g. Dudley et al., 2020).

2.8 Equitable Conservation

The concept of protected area management effectiveness has been around for 25 years (see for instance Hockings et al., 2006), pioneered by the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and has developed steadily ever since. Although still far from perfect we have a whole generation of conservationists who have developed their careers with these tools and concepts already embedded in their approach. Ideas about looking critically at the equity of conservation and attendant issues of social impact and governance quality are newer (Franks & Booker, 2022), but equally important. Equity and governance are also less well supplied with tools and experience although this situation is changing fast. The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has been developing and testing a series of tools to assess social impacts and governance quality, with recent efforts to amalgamate the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) (Stolton et al., 2019) with IIED’s Site-level Assessment of Governance and Equity (SAGE) (IIED, 2022).

Issues of equity go far beyond an understanding of whether the results of biodiversity conservation are fairly distributed. There is now an expectation that any new protected areas, and any recognition of OECMs, include full participation of those people living in, using and abutting the proposed area. In the case of indigenous people such participation should also include a formal process of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). These demands have been in place for some time, but not infrequently ignored in practice by governments. This issue of human rights is now centre-stage and impossible to ignore. I’ll return to this in the last of our nine points below.

2.9 Integration into Wider Landscapes and Seascapes

Unless they happen to be protecting an island, protected areas should not be ‘islands’ (McArthur & Wilson, 1967). In other words, an area that is cut off from other suitable habitat, because surrounding land or water has been transformed and will no longer support most native species, is unlikely to maintain its values in the long term. Yet that is exactly what many protected areas are in practice, a casual glance at Google Earth will show patches of green in the middle of areas of farmland or conurbation, with little opportunity for species to achieve genetic interchange with other populations. Recognition that, however well managed, many of these areas will inevitably degrade over time has prompted increased interest in connectivity (Hilty et al., 2020) and more generally in the notion that protected areas and OECMs should be integrated into wider landscape and seascape approaches (e.g. Chatterton et al., 2017) rather than being seen as separate and somehow removed.

The challenges of addressing this part of the target should not be underestimated. Many protected areas—whether they are managed by park authorities, or private individuals or groups of indigenous peoples and other local communities—were established precisely because the surrounding land or water had been transformed, overexploited or otherwise degraded from an ecological perspective. OECMs are often being suggested as tools for increasing connectivity, but as noted above this won’t help in areas where isolation has already occurred. In these cases, reconnecting protected and conserved areas will require both careful negotiation with existing users and owners, including judicious land and water purchase on occasion and active restoration. This will not happen overnight and, in some cases, will require generational change stretching over many decades. Managers of isolated protected areas will need to keep a watch on impacts, such as inbreeding, and if necessary, provide stop-gap solutions such as introduction of individuals from other populations or special conservation measures for species in decline.

2.10 The Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

In this instance, the GBF is creating an additional push for a process that has been ongoing for twenty years, but which clearly hasn’t yet gone far enough. There has been a long-term problem of authoritarian governments creating protected areas through processes that include forcible loss of rights, ranging from hunting controls to full-scale relocation of communities, sometimes with minimal consultation or compensation. Protected area rangers have also sometimes come under fire for human rights abuses, including violence and sexual assault; giving a poorly trained person access to a uniform and a gun can be dangerous. The role of non-governmental conservation organisations in these issues is complicated, but there is a general perception amongst human rights’ groups that conservationists have been too complicit in the mistreatment of some of the poorest people on the planet. Complicity can vary from active engagement to failing to speak out against abuses in countries and areas where they operate.

This is an enormously complex issue. Any conservation change is going to affect someone. A ban on hunting the last population of a unique primate group will impact the hunters who would like to shoot them for the pot, and biodiversity conservation necessarily involves a series of compromises including negotiation, trade-offs and sometimes also compensation. But in some places, the approach has clearly been off-balance. The issue first gained global attention at the Fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, in 2003, when various leaders of indigenous peoples’ organisations called for the ‘elimination’ of national parks. The debate started a twenty-year process of reform. Now all reputable conservation organisations have detailed safeguarding processes that attempt to avoid human rights abuses at any stage in the creation or management of protected areas. The extent to which they are applied varies, more between the attitudes of individual project leaders and managers than between organisations; over the years we have experienced both good and bad.

As a consultant, I have worked with all the largest conservation NGOs and have seen major changes in approach over the last two decades. A new generation of conservationists is emerging, who are far more aware of social issues than conservationists have been previously and these people are now reaching a stage in their career where they can be influential in shaping decisions and policies. And yet, the accusations and anger have if anything increased rather than decreased. To some extent there may be a historical lag, with old wounds still untreated, but it is also due to the far better access to information available today, with instant communications and a huge social media network tracking these issues. Any controversial actions now are likely to be circulated to activist groups around the world within hours, whereas in the past many problems went unnoticed and unchallenged. Issues that are only peripherally linked to conservation, such as the management of private hunting reserves, often get labelled as a form of fortress conservation. Responses need to be not only about preventing bad practices but also about how responsible parties react when something bad comes to light. A few years ago, a series of sexual abuse scandals were reported in the disaster relief sector; those organisations involved that acted swiftly and transparently to admit and react to the issues, fared better in public opinion than those seeking to brush the problems aside.

A more intractable issue relates to criticising governments if abuse comes to light. Many conservation NGOs are reluctant to call out governments because they fear that doing so will lose them access to the country in question (a far from implausible response). This has left criticism to smaller activist groups inside or outside the country concerned and thus further increased splits within the conservation and human rights lobbies. Some sort of independent review process may be needed in the near future. A number of delegates at COP-15 argued that the issue of human rights should be presented as an overarching chapeau rather than listed multiple times against individual targets. But the IIFB and others countered that it was important to embed principles into the actual targets to provide a necessary and that this is particularly true in Target three, due to the long controversy about protected areas, provided a necessary emphasis. It is clear not only that expectations about participation; FPIC, governance quality, equity and social outcomes are far higher than they have been in the past, but that governments and conservation NGOs will be under far greater scrutiny than hitherto. This is going to be uncomfortable on occasions but is definitely to be welcomed overall.

2.11 Implementing Target Three

To come back to my original caveat: is this just a lot of talk? Just as the people in conservation NGOs who do the lobbying are seldom the same as those putting ideas into practice in the field, the environment ministers who sign agreements are often at odds with ministries responsible for mining, agriculture and urban development. The latter are usually more powerful. Governments change and they have multiple conflicting priorities. Unforeseen events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can create global changes. There is a long and depressing failure of international conservation and sustainable development targets to deliver and there will be plenty of forces working hard to ensure that the GBF goes the same way. The UN Sustainable Development Goals, an ambitious attempt to address all kinds of development problems over a decade, are on track for failure (SDSN and the Bertelsmann Stiftung 2019). The CBD admits that the Aichi targets were generally a failure (Secretariat of the CBD, 2020). Aichi 11, the equivalent of GBF Target three, was in fact the most successful. It broadly met its area target on land and was at least part of the reason for creation of many marine protected areas. But other aspects, such as effectiveness, connectivity and integration into the landscape or seascape, which were also included within Aichi 11, and these were much less successful. The 30 × 30 target is far more ambitious overall, emerging at a time when many parts of the world are already in chaos and where economic recession is widespread.

2.12 Conclusion

So how can we make this work? Money is important; small beer compared with spending on the military or energy production, but the sums needed today are much larger than any environmental investments in the past. The largest and most bitter arguments in Montreal were around money, with developing countries walking out of the negotiating chamber on two occasions. The commitments that were made are welcome, but total commitments are still far less than is needed and whether developed governments actually pay up is far from proven.

The other challenge will be to implement this level of conservation on such a large area in so relatively short a time. A recent analysis showed that there are currently nowhere near enough trained rangers to manage the existing protected area estate, let alone a major expansion (Appleton et al., 2022). Management of OECMs may be even more complex, given that the people involved will not usually have biodiversity conservation as a priority. Evidence of past success is no guarantee that this will continue into the future. The climate is changing and many societies are also undergoing rapid development. The next generation may view their traditional lands and waters in very different ways. Ensuring—as far as is possible—longevity in OECMs will be a major hurdle. Participatory approaches to conservation are proven to be more effective than top-down approaches but they take time and a balance must be found between the urgency of conservation and the need to make sure that all stakeholders are comfortable with the direction of travel. Indigenous peoples and conservationists often have near identical aims, but there is also a long history of mutual suspicion that will not fade away overnight.

But there is no need to end on a depressing note. Despite the real challenges identified above there is also a welcome feeling of cautious optimism about the future amongst the conservation lobby. Notwithstanding shortages in terms of skills and people, there is already a huge cadre of dedicated conservationists, all the way from village level to the highest reaches of government. More companies are prepared to integrate biodiversity properly into their policies, there are more sources of revenue and, perhaps most important of all, a growing public recognition of the benefits from conservation in terms of a range of ecosystem services, cultural and aesthetic benefits and potential for financial revenues. The talking is finally over, now is the time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.