A Global Deal For Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets
The groundbreaking study that provided the first global estimate of land or particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, introducing the interim conservation goal of protecting 30% of land area by 2030.
Study link: Science Advances (2019)
The Global Deal for Nature (GDN) is a time-bound, science-driven plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth. Pairing the GDN and the Paris Climate Agreement would avoid catastrophic climate change, conserve species, and secure essential ecosystem services. New findings give urgency to this union: Less than half of the terrestrial realm is intact, yet conserving all native ecosystems—coupled with energy transition measures—will be required to remain below a 1.5°C rise in average global temperature.
The GDN targets 30% of Earth to be formally protected and an additional 20% designated as climate stabilization areas, by 2030, to stay below 1.5°C. The study reviews numerous global-scale conservation priorities regimes and compiles them, revealing that a 30% protection could conserve 67% of terrestrial ecoregions, thereby reducing extinction threats and carbon emissions from natural reservoirs.Freshwater and marine targets included here extend the GDN to all realms and provide a pathway to ensuring a more livable biosphere.
The science of conservation biology underpins the GDN and is based on five fundamental goals:
- represent all native ecosystem types and successional stages across their natural range of variation—or “representation”
- maintain viable populations of all native species in natural patterns of abundance and distribution—or “saving species”
- maintain ecological function and ecosystem services
- maximize carbon sequestration by natural ecosystems
- address environmental change to maintain evolutionary processes and adapt to the impacts of climate change
To ensure representation of native ecosystem types, goal 1, terrestrial ecoregions have been a widely used ecological classification system for conservation planning for nearly three decades. The rationale is that a global map of ecoregions can serve as the framework to ensure creation of networks of protected areas that represent the widest array of habitats and, by extension, conserve the widest range of species and their unique adaptations to their environments. A recent global review tested the distribution of more than 200 million species records of plants, animals, and fungi against the map of terrestrial ecoregions and revealed sharp, statistically significant discontinuities in species ranges across boundaries. Thus, ecoregions effectively represent similar clusters of not only habitat types but also species—underpinning analyses to address goals 1 and 2 of the GDN.
Lead scientist: Eric Dinerstein (Resolve)
Contributing authors: Anup Joshi (U Minnesota), Carly Vynne (Resolve), Enric Sala (NGS), Sanjiv Fernando (Resolve), Thomas Lovejoy (George Mason U), Greg Asner (Arizona State U), David Olson (WWF Hong Kong), Juan Mayorga (NGS), Jonathan Bailey (NGS), Neil Burgess (UNEP/WCMC), Karl Burkart (One Earth), Reed Noss (Florida Inst. for Conservation Science), Ya-Ping Zhang (Kunming Inst. Zoology), Alessandro Baccini (Woodwell Climate Research Center), Tanya Birch (Google), Nathan Hahn (Resolve), Lucas Joppa (Microsoft), Eric Wikramanayake (Environmental Foundation)