Where nature protection stands, five years from the 2030 deadline

September 24, 2026

The world's most ambitious nature conservation target — protecting 30% of the planet's land and oceans by 2030 — remains within reach for land, but marine protection is falling well short, according to a new assessment from the conservation groups Campaign for Nature and Together for the Ocean.

The 30x30 commitment

Known as “30x30,” the goal was adopted in December 2022 as Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an international pact often compared to the Paris Agreement on climate. Nearly 200 countries pledged to conserve at least 30% of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine areas by the end of the decade, with particular focus on ecosystems critical to biodiversity and on areas that are ecologically representative, well-connected, and equitably governed. The framework also calls for recognising the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities over their traditional territories, since many of the world's most intact ecosystems sit on land they steward.

Land: on track, but not there yet

Roughly 20% of the world's land and inland waters are currently classified as protected or conserved. That figure could rise to around 27% by 2030 if governments fully honour their commitments, and closer to 30% if the roughly 130 countries that have set numeric national targets actually deliver on them.

Brian O'Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, struck a cautiously optimistic note, pointing to countries that have recently expanded their protected areas, including France, Australia, Costa Rica, Oman, and South Africa. “I think it's doable,” he said, “but I don't think it will be easy.” Latin America and Oceania stand out as the regions with the largest share of territory already under some form of reserve status, while progress elsewhere has been slower and more uneven. Since the framework took effect, an additional 1.3 million square kilometres of land have theoretically come under official protection.

Oceans: the real bottleneck

At sea, the numbers are worse. Total marine coverage under protection stands at only around 10%, despite roughly 6 million square kilometres of ocean nominally gaining protected status since 2022. Some researchers argue even that 10% figure overstates real‑world impact: recent studies on marine protected areas suggest that when ecological effectiveness is measured strictly, rather than just legal designation on paper, less than 2% of the ocean may be genuinely and effectively protected.

Fewer than half of coastal nations currently have a national target for ocean protection in place, and vulnerable ecosystems such as the high seas and deep‑sea habitats remain especially exposed, since so few real protective measures have reached them. These offshore and deep‑water ecosystems fall largely outside national jurisdictions, which has historically made them harder to regulate and easier to overlook.

The “paper parks” problem

A recurring issue in the report is the gap between designation and actual conservation. Drawing a boundary on a map and calling it a protected area doesn't guarantee the biodiversity inside it is safeguarded — a pattern conservationists call “paper parks.” Many such areas lack the legal status, funding, or enforcement capacity needed to prevent degradation, and a number of protected sites have lost significant ecological value since 2019. Some have even been downgraded, resized, or stripped of protections altogether in recent years, a trend the report's authors say undermines confidence in headline coverage statistics. The NGOs are urging governments to tackle this directly, by giving existing “paper parks” real legal teeth and the monitoring resources to back them up, rather than simply designating new areas on paper.

Financing the gap

Money remains one of the biggest obstacles to closing the gap. Current global spending on nature protection is estimated at around €20 billion a year, while researchers estimate that reaching the 30x30 target would require somewhere between €87 billion and €157 billion annually. Closing that gap will likely mean substantially higher funding from national governments, multilateral institutions, philanthropic donors, and private‑sector actors with a stake in healthy ecosystems, from fisheries to ecotourism.

Next steps

The findings arrive ahead of a major checkpoint for the Kunming-Montreal framework: the UN biodiversity summit running October 18–30 in Yerevan, Armenia, where an official progress report is due to be presented, offering the first comprehensive stocktake since the framework was adopted. Negotiators will use the gathering to assess how far countries have come, negotiate financing commitments, and agree on the additional measures needed to hit the 2030 deadline.

One development offers some hope for ocean governance specifically: the UN High Seas Treaty, which entered into force in January, could provide new legal tools for establishing protected areas in international waters — a piece of the puzzle that has been largely missing until now, given that the high seas fall outside any single country's control.

Governments have shown that rapid progress is possible when they commit to it. But as O'Donnell put it, the world isn't yet on track to reach 30% coverage overall, and oceans in particular need to catch up fast if the 2030 target is going to mean much more than a number on paper.

CPM