30 by 30: conserve 30% of land, waters and seas by 2030

The areas must also be managed, and the system that holds them must be ecologically representative, well connected and equitably governed. Indigenous and traditional territories are recognised where applicable. The areas counted can range from strictly protected land to areas with sustainable use consistent with conservation.

Protected Planet, the official record, reported in October 2026 that protected areas and other measures covered 17.58 per cent of land and inland waters. A study published in Nature on 14 October 2026 combined that record with national datasets and put the figure at 26.8 per cent. The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent led the study, with the Institute of Zoology and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. The authors caution that grasslands and shrublands remain poorly covered. They add that area alone is not enough, since the target also asks that the areas be effective, connected and fairly governed.

The modelling work is spatial. It finds areas that are in national records but missing from the global one, and gaps in the network by habitat type. It measures how connected the pieces are, and tests what a proposed change of land use would do to coverage and connectivity. The data starts at Protected Planet and the national conservation registers. The models are those of the land use use case, with connectivity tools such as Circuitscape.