Photograph by: Enric Sala, National Geographic
The 30 by 30 framework is a global plan that seeks to stop the extinction of species and habitats in our oceans by protecting 30 per cent of the world's oceans within the next decade. Neil Cairns spoke to leading scientists who helped to formulate the plan.
December 17, 2021
Seeking to protect one of the most biodiverse waterways in the world from industrial fishing, the Costa Rican government announced today it is expanding Cocos Island National Park by 27 times. The waters surrounding the tropical Pacific island teems with wildlife, including sharks, rays, dolphins, turtles and whales.
The government also unveiled the Bicentennial Marine Managed Area, twice the size of the expanded Cocos Island National Park, which will include some no-take areas and strengthen fisheries management. The expansion of the Cocos Island National Park from an area of 2,034 km 2 to 54,844 km 2 and the Bicentennial Marine Management Area from an area of 9,649 km 2 to 106,285.56 km 2 expands the country’s protection of its ocean from 2.7% of its waters to approximately 30%. With these marine protected area expansions, Costa Rica is leading in its global ambition and drive to achieve the global goal of protecting at least 30% of the planet - land and sea - by 2030.
October 14, 2021
The calls for biodiversity and the climate crisis to be tackled in tandem are growing. “It is clear that we cannot solve [the global biodiversity and climate crises] in isolation – we either solve both or we solve neither,” says Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s climate and environment minister, with the launch in June of a report produced by the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts. Zoological Society of London senior research fellow Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, who led a study on the subject published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in September, says: “The level of interconnectedness between the climate change and biodiversity crises is high and should not be underestimated. This is not just about climate change impacting biodiversity; it is also about the loss of biodiversity deepening the climate crisis.”
October 4, 2021
The world lost about 14 percent of its coral reefs in the decade after 2009, mainly because of climate change, according to a sweeping international report on the state of the world’s corals.
The report, issued late Monday, underscores the catastrophic consequences of global warming while also offering some hope that some coral reefs can be saved if humans move quickly to rein in greenhouse gases.
“Coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine telling us how quickly it can go wrong,” said David Obura, one of the report’s editors and chairman of the coral specialist group for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The 14 percent decline, he said, was cause for deep concern. “In finance, we worry about half-percent declines and half-percent changes in employment and interest rates.”
May 24, 2021
More than two thirds of our planet is covered by the oceans, but there’s still much to be uncovered about the role that these watery worlds play in climate change.
But recent scientific research claims that bottom trawling, a method of fishing that involves dragging heavy nets across the seafloor, emits about the same amount of carbon annually as aviation. Seabed sediments, which act as huge carbon sinks, are churned up, resulting in carbon dioxide emissions. So should trawling – commonplace around the globe because of its effectiveness – be reduced? And has the climate change impact of bottom trawling been exaggerated?
April 21, 2021
Today, the United Nations launched its Second World Ocean Assessment on the global state of the world’s oceans.
“The Second World Ocean Assessment warns that many benefits that the ocean provides to humankind are increasingly being undermined by our actions. [...] The findings of this assessment underscore the urgency of ambitious outcomes in this year’s biodiversity, climate and other high-level summits and events. Together we can foster not only a green, but also a blue recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and help ensure the long-term resilience and sustainable relationship with the ocean,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres in his remarks at the assessment’s launch.
March 26, 2021
From the eye of a satellite, the ocean is streaked with smoky white lines that flow and twist like scribbled handwriting across the surface. But these lines aren’t naturally occurring features — they’re sediment plumes from large trawling vessels that scrape the seafloor with nets and heavy equipment, trying to catch bottom-dwelling species like shrimp and whiting.
The environmental consequences of trawling are still being investigated since the plumes were first noticed in satellite imagery in 2008. But a new study in Nature suggests that it churns up and releases carbon that’s been locked up inside sediment at the bottom of the ocean — between about 600 million and 1,500 million tons, according to the study’s initial estimates, which is about the same amount as the global aviation industry.
March 18, 2021
Humanity has no better friend on this planet than the ocean. It provides more than half the oxygen we need to breathe. It supplies food that helps sustain more than 3 billion people. It absorbs many of the pollutants we keep pumping into the atmosphere: carbon dioxide, ozone-depleting chemicals.
The ocean is the kind of unwaveringly supportive friend who tolerates our toxicity and shields us from the worst consequences of our actions. It’s the friend that people have taken for granted for far too long. By overfishing and mining and drilling the sea floor, humanity is risking not just the ocean’s health but our own.
But new research suggests a strategic, globally coordinated effort to protect more of the world’s waters could not only bolster marine biodiversity but dramatically increase the number of fish available for harvest and boost the amount of carbon taken up by the ocean, aiding the fight against climate change.
March 18, 2021
The world must protect at least 30% of the global ocean in order to restore marine life, increase seafood supply, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Meeting this goal would generate annual benefits – in terms of increased economic output and improved ecosystem services – that far exceed the investment required.
Last November, something happened in the middle of the South Atlantic that was unusual enough to make a local northern rockhopper penguin raise one of its long spiky yellow eyebrows. The tiny archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory, set aside more than 687,000 square kilometers (265,000 square miles, an area larger than France) of ocean to establish the world’s fourth-largest marine protected area (MPA).
March 18, 2021
2021 ought to be the “super year” for nature, where we collectively agree on how to deal with the greatest risk to humanity: we have become totally out of balance with nature. But there is a solution that is scientifically proven and cost-effective, and new research has found a way forward.
We’ve already lost 60% of terrestrial wildlife and 90% of the big ocean fish. Approximately 96% of all mammals on earth are humans and our domesticated livestock. Only 4% is everything else, from bears to elephants to tigers. We now risk the extinction of 1 million species during this century. Losing these species and all the goods and services they give us would mean the collapse of our life support system and everything we care about and need to survive: our food, our health, our economy, our security – everything.
March 17, 2021
A global map compiled by international scientists pinpoints priority places for action to maximise benefits for people and nature.
Currently, only 7% of the ocean is protected.
A pledge to protect at least 30% by 2030 is gathering momentum ahead of this year's key UN biodiversity summit.
The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, sets a framework for prioritising areas of the ocean for protection.
The ocean covers 70% of the Earth, yet its importance for solving the challenges of our time has been overlooked, said study researcher Prof Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
"The benefits are clear," he said. "If we want to solve the three most pressing challenges of our century - biodiversity loss, climate change and food shortages - we must protect our ocean."
March 17, 2021
For the first time, scientists have calculated how much planet-warming carbon dioxide is released into the ocean by bottom trawling, the practice of dragging enormous nets along the ocean floor to catch shrimp, whiting, cod and other fish. The answer: As much as global aviation releases into the air.
While preliminary, that was one of the most surprising findings of a groundbreaking new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study offers what is essentially a peer-reviewed, interactive road map for how nations can confront the interconnected crises of climate change and wildlife collapse at sea.
It follows similar recent research focused on protecting land, all with a goal of informing a global agreement on biodiversity to be negotiated this autumn in Kunming, China.
March 17, 2021
It’s been well established by now that the agricultural systems producing our food contribute at least one fifth of global anthropogenic carbon emissions—and up to a third if waste and transportation are factored in. A troubling new report points to a previously overlooked source: an industrial fishing process practiced by dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, China, and the E.U.
The study, published today in the scientific journal Nature, is the first to calculate the carbon cost of bottom trawling, in which fishing fleets drag immense weighted nets along the ocean floor, scraping up fish, shellfish and crustaceans along with significant portions of their habitats.
March 17, 2021
The campaign to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030, supported by more than 70 nations, is known mostly for soaring ambition and scant achievement so far. Just 7 percent of the seas are protected and only 2.7 percent are highly protected.
“It is very optimistic to think we’ll reach ‘30 by 30,’” says Patricia Majluf, a Peruvian fisheries scientist who has worked to create a deep-sea protected area off Peru in the face of strong resistance from the fishing industry. Peru has protected less than half a percent of its offshore waters. The proposed Nazca Ridge Marine Protected Area, on an undersea mountain range that stretches out into the Pacific from the Peru coast, is expected to be finalized this spring. It would boost Peru’s protected waters to 8 percent.
March 17, 2021
After a year of pandemic-induced delays, 2021 is set to be a big year for biodiversity, climate and the ocean. Later this year, world leaders are expected to gather for meetings of the United Nations conventions on biological diversity and climate to set future agendas. Ocean policies will be a priority for both.
Momentum is building for what is called the 30 × 30 campaign — a goal to protect 30% of the planet (both land and sea) by 2030. Last December, the 30% ocean goal was backed by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, which comprises the heads of state of 14 coastal nations, including some of the largest countries, such as Indonesia, and the smallest, like Palau. This is an important step.
