HIBAPRESS-RABAT- IDDRI
This October, the international community will gather in Cali, Colombia, for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Until then, each country will have to revise its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) and submit national objectives aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022.
Particular attention will certainly be given to national commitments to implement Target 3, also known as the 30×30 goal, which calls for the conservation and management of 30% of coastal and marine areas through “protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures” by 2030.
With marine protected areas (MPAs) currently covering only around 8% of the Ocean, the international community faces a major challenge to achieve this objective in the next six years. To answer this, our Decryption offers a roadmap including recommendations for the implementation of the 30×30 objective in the Ocean. In particular, it calls on States to (i) include a national roadmap for the creation of MPAs in their NBSAPs, (ii) immediately begin to identify potential MPA sites in the high seas, launch consultative processes and anticipate implementation challenges and (iii) establish a specific mechanism to evaluate the implementation of the 30×30 objective in the Ocean in order to feed into the 2028 discussions during COP 18 of the CBD and of the potential UNOC4, thus filling the void left by the Kunming-Montreal agreement.
: Submit national targets aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022){kind=link}