A comment by our Chief Executive on the danger to nature recovery posed by a focus on hitting a target but missing the point.
I enjoy an analogy. Sometimes they are football based. Here is a football based analogy on the UK's approach to 30 x 30 which entertained and depressed me in equal measure on this morning's dog walk: "Imagine if the Football Association were to decide that in order to deliver 'a beautiful game which is enjoyed by everyone by 2050' with lots of good pitches and high and diverse participation, that their only focus was going to be to increase the Premier League from 20 teams to 30 teams by 2030 and to protect them from relegation. Such is their focus they intend to remove support and denigrate all other leagues and grass roots because they won't count towards 30 x 30. They remove any support for the governance of the game outside the Premier League, only bothering with training referees for the top tier. Premier League voices push for this because they'll get all the TV money. Meanwhile grass roots pitches get sold off for development and kids drift away from sport altogether. In 2031 the FA sees that participation and engagement in the game has declined even further, but by then realise all of the infrastructure is gone: no pitches, no volunteers, no players. In the short term this is no problem for the Premier League because they will get even more attention. But soon nobody cares. Football is gone." 30 x 30 is nested in the Convention on Biological Diversity which aims to have us 'living in harmony with nature by 2050'. To drive action in this direction the Global Biodiversity Framework has been signed up to by the UK. The Framework is a commitment for 30% of land and sea to be "effectively conserved and managed", especially areas of high biodiversity and ecosystem services, with good governance and integrated into the wider landscape. The UK has opted, and been pushed, into a very narrow "protected for nature" definition and is now raising the bar of criteria way above anything except the strict sites based approach which we've been largely stuck on since nature conservation became a thing. When the system is broke, doubling down on the system is not the answer. 30 x 30 is directional. It could help galvanise systemic change across landscapes for nature. But it's grinding into a directive to hit a target and miss the point.