Treehugger
January 28, 2021
Earth’s biodiversity is in trouble. A landmark 2019 assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that around one million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.1 At the same time, human actions have dramatically transformed 75 percent of the Earth’s surface and 66 percent of its ocean ecosystems.
To solve this problem, a group of more than 50 countries have come together under the banner of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People and pledged to protect 30 percent of Earth’s land and oceans by 2030. The initiative is being referred to in the media as HAC 30x30.
“Our future depends on preventing the collapse of the natural systems that provide our food, clean water, clean air and stable climate,” Rita El Zaghloul, HAC coordinator at the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica, told Treehugger in an email. “In order to preserve these crucial services for our sustainable economies, we must protect enough of the natural world to sustain them.”