• How Australia — one of the planet’s most megadiverse nations — tackles its goal to conserve 30% of its land and seas by 2030 (30×30) may signal whether this, the world’s most ambitious conservation commitment, can succeed.
• With just four years to meet its promise, Australia has a way to go, but has also achieved some important milestones in part by involving Indigenous communities closely in the effort.
• “If Australia meets the target well, it will help demonstrate that conservation can be representative, rights-based, well-funded, and effective,” a new op-ed argues.
• This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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Australia has just four years to meet a global biodiversity promise: Protect 30% of its land and seas by 2030.

What happens here in one of the planet’s megadiverse nations, which is also an extinction hotspot, will signal whether the world’s most ambitious conservation commitment can succeed. Australia is a wealthy country with abundant resources, so the question is not only if it can meet its target goal, but whether it’s protecting the right places.

Global example

In 2022, nearly 200 countries agreed to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030 under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, known as 30 by 30. The pact calls for at least 30% of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments to be effectively conserved and managed to help reverse biodiversity loss. In addition, the conserved areas need to be biodiverse, ecologically representative, well connected, well managed, and equitably governed, while the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities are recognized and respected.

Australia’s biodiversity crisis is already severe. The country is home to globally distinctive species and ecosystems, yet it has one of the world’s worst records for mammal extinctions driven by land clearing, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, changed fire regimes, water extraction, climate change, and poorly-controlled development.

Lyndal Scobell of Cape York Natural Resource Management Ltd and Roderick Doughboy, an Indigenous Land and Sea Ranger, discuss land management issues at the Split Rock Escarpment overlooking the Kennedy Valley near Laura in Outback Queensland. Image courtesy of Kerry Trapnell.

But the country has made great progress. Marine protected areas cover more than half of Australian waters, and most recently, the dedication of the Pmere Atherre Antenterreme/Simpson Desert Indigenous Protected Area near Alice Springs adds more than 4.7 million hectares (11.6 million acres) to the National Reserve System, and helping the nation to reach 25% protection of terrestrial areas. This is a significant step, both because of its scale and because it illustrates how Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) have been central to Australia’s conservation gains.

This is why Australia’s 30 by 30 commitment should be treated as more than a national reporting obligation, but rather as something of global importance that my organization, the Pew Charitable Trusts, advocates for here along with others in the 30 by 30 Alliance. It is a chance to move from managing biodiversity decline to preventing it, while respecting Indigenous rights and protecting ecosystems that have historically been overlooked or difficult to protect. Implemented poorly, it risks becoming another exercise in environmental accounting: Impressive at the headline level, but too weak to change what happens to threatened habitats on the ground.

But milestones can obscure the work yet to be done. Moving from 25% to 30% of protected landmass is not simply a question of finding enough remaining hectares. The next phase must focus on whether newly protected and conserved areas fill ecological gaps, improve connectivity, secure places of high biodiversity value, and come with the necessary funding and governing mechanisms. The challenge, therefore, is not necessarily the quantity of land to conserve, but also the quality of the land chosen.

Protecting the right places

The size of a reserve system can expand while still leaving threatened ecosystems exposed in agricultural districts, coastal development zones, and urban growth corridors. Protecting what is easiest is not the same as protecting what is most important.

For that reason, Australia’s choices raise a bigger question: Will 30 by 30 protect the right places, or merely count the available ones? Conservation can be less effective when it is imposed, excludes local communities, or substitutes for stopping destructive activity elsewhere. But protected and conserved areas remain among the clearest tools for keeping habitat intact, protecting ecological processes, helping species persist through land-use change and giving priority to long-term ecological value over short-term extraction.

The 30% target also raises a hard question about ecological representation: Australia’s protected area system has historically overrepresented remote and less contested landscapes while underrepresenting ecosystems that coincide with farming, development and population growth. Remote land is often cheaper and easier to add to the reserve system, but ecological need does not always follow political convenience. If new protected areas follow the old pattern, Australia may reach 30% while still failing some of its most threatened habitats.

Bluff State Forest in Queensland, Australia. Image courtesy of Kerry Trapnell.

Protecting the right places means working in difficult landscapes: Remnant grasslands on the urban fringe, fragmented woodlands in agricultural districts, grazing leases, wetlands affected by irrigation, overdrawn river systems, coastal habitats in the path of development and private lands with high biodiversity value. It will also require creative policy: Public acquisition, private land conservation, stronger planning rules, restoration and support for landholders willing to protect biodiversity over the long term.

And the choices are not only about biodiversity. Climate change and biodiversity loss are often treated separately, but they reinforce each other. Degraded ecosystems store less carbon, hold less water, provide less refuge and recover more slowly from fires, floods and droughts. Intact ecosystems help buffer communities and wildlife against climate shocks. Protecting more land and sea is, therefore, not only a biodiversity measure; it is an investment in Australia’s resistance. These choices will determine whether 30 by 30 becomes a conservation breakthrough or a numbers game.

Indigenous governance is key

For Australia, 30 by 30 must also be realized through Indigenous rights and governance. The global framework recognizes the importance of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and that principle is especially relevant here. Australian ecosystems have been shaped by tens of thousands of years of First Nations care, knowledge and management. In many landscapes, restoring and supporting that management is among the most effective conservation strategies available.

How protected land is managed matters as much as where it is. Conservation can either strengthen or undermine land rights, cultural obligations and authority over Country. Several examples show what progress can look like when Traditional Owners and governments work in genuine partnership. These include IPAs, the Cape York Peninsula Tenure Resolution Program, which returns selected public lands to Aboriginal ownership while creating jointly managed parks, and joint-managed national parks in Western Australia, where Traditional Owners share formal management responsibilities with the government.

IPAs are among Australia’s most important conservation achievements, not just because of the area they cover, but because they embody a different model of care. Ranger programs, cultural burning, invasive species control, threatened species monitoring, protection of cultural sites and intergenerational knowledge transfer are not conservation add-ons. They are part of what effective conservation looks like when grounded in living relationships. This work is supported by organizations such as Country Needs People — which Pew supports — that help strengthen Indigenous ranger programs and IPAs across Australia.

The Simpson Desert announcement is one such reminder. It is significant not only because it helped push Australia past the 25% land protection mark — it also reflects the scale of conservation possible when Traditional Owners are supported on their own terms. As Australia looks for the remaining areas needed to reach 30%, the lesson should be that conservation is strongest when it follows the rights, authority, and long-term relationships to a place. Any credible ecological future for Australia will be shaped by people whose obligations to Country long predate the state.

Kennedy Range National Park, Western Australia. Image courtesy of Renae Boyd.

The commitment

Correct implementation and governing requires money. Australia needs a dedicated, long-term fund to safeguard high-biodiversity land and expand the reserve system across public, private, and Indigenous tenures guided by biodiversity value, ecological representation, connectivity, and Traditional Owner aspirations. Stop-start funding creates inefficiency, whereas long-term protection needs certainty.

Protected areas without adequate resourcing can become symbolic victories, while biodiversity continues to decline. This is where the difference between paper protection and real protection becomes clear. If management is underfunded or governance is weak, a place can be counted toward a target and still lose the species, habitats or cultural values that justified its protection. The credibility of 30 by 30 will depend not only on what is added to maps by 2030, but on whether those places are still improving decades later.

Biodiversity loss is a slow emergency, which is one reason governments find it easy to defer. Its harms are spread across landscapes, species, and generations. A target for 2030 gives the issue a deadline and creates a clear test of whether governments are willing to act before damage becomes irreversible.

Australia’s 30 by 30 promise is a concrete test of whether the global biodiversity agreement can change decisions on the ground in a wealthy, megadiverse country with the means to act. If Australia meets the target well, it will help demonstrate that conservation can be representative, rights-based, well-funded, and effective.

Even if it does not solve every biodiversity challenge, success will show that meaningful progress is possible and provide a model for other countries working toward the same goal. The Simpson Desert milestone shows what can be achieved at scale.

Achieving the 30% pledge matters. But reaching 30% the right way matters more.

 

Tim Nicol is director of Pew’s Protecting Australia’s Nature program and an expert in Australian conservation policy and advocacy, with expertise spanning marine protection, Indigenous land management, and protected areas.

Banner image: Minerva Hills National Park, Queensland, Australia. Image courtesy of Nathan White/Tourism and Events Queensland.

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