Nature Data Lab

The Nature Data Lab has its origins in a series of convenings held in 2017 at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC and at UNEP-WCMC headquarters in Cambridge, UK, supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) with over 100 leading researchers and experts in the field of conservation biology. At the time, the foundation’s Science & Technology program had been largely focused on advancing the central goals of the 2015 UN Paris Climate Agreement – a limit of 1.5°C in global average temperature rise and net-zero emissions by mid-century. LDF commissioned an international consortium of scientists to produce the One Earth Climate Model (OECM), which provided a detailed roadmap to achieving the goals of the convention, based on advanced regional energy transition scenarios coupled with the first geotemporal scenario for carbon removal from nature-based solutions.

Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals (APCAG) report covers, 2019/2022/2024

Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals Part 1 (APCAG) was published in 2019, followed by APCAG Part 2 in 2022, funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Version 3, titled the One Earth ‘Razor’s Edge’ Climate Model, was released in 2024.

But in 2017 a new convention was looming… The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (the second of the Rio conventions) had been slated for 2020 with the mandate to develop a comparable “north star” goal for the conservation and restoration of nature. While there were numerous ontologies and frameworks being proposed, it was clear that the scientific community had yet to coalesce around a central set of targets to structure the multilateral agreement. With this in mind, LDF commissioned a second international consortium led by Dr. Eric Dinerstein, the former Chief Scientist of WWF and co-lead of the Ecoregions biogeographical framework, resulting in the landmark paper “A Global Deal for Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets”, which was the first peer-reviewed study to introduce and provide the rationale for a global 30% area-based target in the 2020-2030 timeframe (later known as 30x30).

A Global Deal for Nature, Global Safety Net, and Conservation Imperatives papers

“A Global Deal for Nature..” was published in 2019, followed by a “A Global Safety Net…” in 2020, and “Conservation Imperatives…” in 2024, forming the scientific groundwork for the Nature Data Lab.

The following year, the team conducted a spatially explicit meta-analysis integrating 11 global-scale models into five broad ecological categories, the first attempt to document the full extent of terrestrial areas considered “of particular importance for biodiversity”. Two additional data sets were developed in the paper to include land beyond these areas that provide essential ecosystem services related to “climate stabilization” in two brackets – areas which store 50-250 tCO2 per hectare and areas which store > 250 tCO2 per hectare in combined above and below ground carbon.

Global Safety Net study legend with 5 geospatial cluster components

Legend for the Global Safety Net study, including the component scientific data sets used to create each of the 5 geospatial clusters.

The result of the study, “A ‘Global Safety Net’ to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth’s climate”, found that 30.6% of global land area is critical for the first three clusters (note: this includes protected areas listed in UN World Database on Protected Areas in 2019), and an additional 19.8% of land area would be needed to cover the second two clusters, totaling 50.4% of global land area.

By 2020 One Earth had spun out from LDF as an independent nonprofit organization with the support of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and, to coincide with the release of the study, launched the Global Safety Net v1 web application (GSN1), which provided the first-of-its-kind representation of the extent of natural lands and their coverage by protected areas in each country and ecoregion at 1 km resolution. Named a ‘World Changing Idea’ by Fast Company in 2021, the application has had over 50,000 active users in 196 countries. In 2024, in conjunction with the release of the consortium’s third paper, “Conservation Imperatives: securing the last unprotected terrestrial sites harboring irreplaceable biodiversity”, a process to increase the optical resolution of the data was attempted (GSN2).

Since that time, the group managing the Global Safety Net has collected hundreds of product requests from NGOs, researchers, and public officials, asking for expanded GSN data and modeled outputs to better track collective progress towards Targets 2, 3, and 4 of the UN Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. These inputs fed into a redesign process for GSN3, engineered from the ground up to provide higher resolution and higher cadence data, dynamically updated at national and subnational scales based on the latest inventory of natural land cover, surface water extent, established protected areas, and Indigenous territories.

In 2025, it was decided to create a separate initiative housed at One Earth, the Nature Data Lab, which manages inbound requests for data and directly supports the research operation required to deliver annual progress reports on the state of the world’s natural lands and freshwater bodies – classified by land type and ecological function – tracking the extent to which these areas are protected or conserved, including governance by local community conservation organizations and Indigenous territories. GSN3 offers the general public, governments, businesses, philanthropists, and financial institutions the ability to monitor progress towards the 30x30 target and other key biodiversity goals, and it provides advanced statistics to support decision makers working on environmental policies, investment strategies, and corporate sustainability efforts. Global Safety Net research has been featured in 75+ media outlets with a half-billion impressions globally, including the New York Times, USA Today, CBS, The Guardian, Forbes, and National Geographic.

While GSN3 is at the heart of the Nature Data Lab operation, we continue to support research efforts that fill critical knowledge gaps, including State of Nature (SON) metrics, biogeography, drivers of biodiversity loss, the interrelationship between climate change and biodiversity, social dynamics of conservation, nature finance, and implications of a new ‘nature-positive’ macroeconomic paradigm. To date we have funded or developed more than 40 peer-reviewed and technical papers, supporting over 100 researchers.

Learn more about the Grand Challenge that drives our work at the Nature Data Lab.