Campaign for Nature
June 30, 2022
At the United Nations (UN) Ocean Conference taking place in Lisbon this week, the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) announced that 100 countries have now committed to its core mission to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by the end of the decade, also known as “30x30.” The science-driven, global goal to protect at least 30% of the planet by 2030 is one of the cornerstones of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework set to be agreed at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) now taking place in Montreal 5 to 17 December 2022.
Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the United States of America, Estonia, Saint Lucia, Bahrain, Montenegro, and Burkina Faso are among the latest countries to sign on to the HAC, an intergovernmental group of over 100 countries co-chaired by Costa Rica and France and by the United Kingdom as the Ocean co-chair. Together, HAC member countries hold more than 58% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and more than 38% of the world’s terrestrial carbon stocks. HAC member countries hold more than 54% of the biodiversity conservation priorities that exist within marine exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and more than 54% of the seafloor carbon within EEZs.