CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 104 of 120

Correct — A, At least 30% of the planet should be protected by 2030. The 30 x 30 target is the campaign to place thirty per cent of the Earth's land and ocean under protection by the year 2030. It came out of a 2019 paper in Science Advances, A Global Deal for Nature, and was then carried by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, which more than fifty countries had joined by January 2021 and more than a hundred by October 2022. The two numbers in the name are what to hold on to — thirty per cent of the planet, by 2030 — and the reason the target is stated as a share of area rather than as a species count is that habitat protection is the one lever that works across all species at once.

• (b)At least 30% of the cultivated area should be brought under organic farming by 2030. — Organic farming targets exist in India — the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana and Sikkim's fully organic status are the usual examples — but they are national programmes with their own numbers. The 30 x 30 label belongs to area under protection, not to cultivated area under organic methods.
• (c)At least 30% of the energy requirements should be met by renewable sources by 2030. — Renewable-energy shares are negotiated under climate policy, and India's own commitments of that kind are expressed in gigawatts of installed capacity and in the share of non-fossil sources in the power mix. The 30 x 30 name is not used there.
• (d)At least 30% of the people below poverty line should be brought out of their poverty by 2030. — Poverty reduction is covered by the first Sustainable Development Goal, which is framed as ending poverty in all its forms rather than as a thirty per cent target. The initiative in the news under this name was a biodiversity one.

Protected areas are the main instrument of area-based biodiversity conservation, and the international system has always set them as a percentage target. The Aichi Biodiversity Targets agreed at Nagoya in 2010 asked for seventeen per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and ten per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. The 30 x 30 campaign raised that ambition and simplified it into a single figure covering land and sea alike. Crucially the framing is not just about drawing lines on a map: the target speaks of areas effectively conserved and managed, and of respecting the rights and territories of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Numeric-slogan questions are answered by matching the two numbers to a field, and here the field is biodiversity. If the multiplication sign in the name is read as 'thirty per cent by 2030' the option almost writes itself; the distractors are all real policy areas with their own numbers, deliberately chosen so that a candidate who has only half-registered the phrase can rationalise any of them. The most important development since this April 2022 paper is that 30 x 30 stopped being a campaign and became law of the international kind: in December 2022 at COP15 in Montreal it was adopted as Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the third of twenty-three global targets for 2030. Anyone answering this question today should be able to name that framework as well as the campaign that preceded it.

• 30 x 30 is the goal of designating thirty per cent of the Earth's land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030.
• The idea was set out in the 2019 Science Advances paper A Global Deal for Nature and taken up by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People.
• More than fifty countries had joined the coalition by January 2021 and more than a hundred by October 2022.
• In December 2022 the target was adopted as Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP15, one of twenty-three targets for 2030.
• The predecessor Aichi Target 11, agreed in 2010, had asked for seventeen per cent of land and inland water and ten per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020.

• Reading 30 x 30 as a renewable-energy or organic-farming target. It is an area-under-protection target.
• Taking it as thirty per cent of land only. The figure covers ocean as well as land.
• Confusing it with Aichi Target 11, whose figures were seventeen and ten per cent by 2020.

As a what-does-this-initiative-mean item, as a statements question on the Kunming-Montreal framework, or as a comparison with the earlier Aichi targets.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 30 x 30 target was formally adopted in December 2022 as a target of which one of the following?

  • (a)The Paris Agreement
  • (b)The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
  • (c)The Ramsar Convention
  • (d)The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

  Answer(b) The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — agreed at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, where 30 x 30 became Target 3.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Aichi Target 11, agreed in 2010, called for what share of terrestrial and inland water areas to be conserved by 2020?

  • (a)10 per cent
  • (b)17 per cent
  • (c)25 per cent
  • (d)30 per cent

  Answer(b) 17 per cent — with ten per cent for coastal and marine areas. The 30 x 30 campaign raised both figures to a single thirty per cent.