Public Strongly Backs Aim of 30% of Land and Sea Set Aside For Nature, Poll Finds (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0179021520
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/05/1436209/public-strongly-backs-aim-of-30-of-land-and-sea-set-aside-for-nature-poll-finds
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/05/30x30-biodiversity-target-protecting-nature-land-seas-survey-public-support-aoe
> Nearly 200 nations agreed in 2022 to set aside 30% of the world's land and 30% of marine areas for nature. But just 17.6% of the world's land and 8.6% of the seas are now under global protection, and more than 100 nations are less than halfway to meeting the target, which was established under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
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> Governments will need to implement swift changes if they are to achieve the target within the next five years. But setting aside more space for nature can be a political pitfall. Often it can mean restricting people's access to land, halting resource extraction and relocating human settlements. These issues, along with possible effects on economic growth, are often cited by countries as barriers to expanding protecting areas. Research [2]published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, suggests that more than 80% of the public across eight sampled countries support the policy.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/05/30x30-biodiversity-target-protecting-nature-land-seas-survey-public-support-aoe
[2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2503355122
I fully support (Score:3, Funny)
Leveling my neighbor's house so I can have a better view of nature out my window.
Re:I fully support (Score:5, Insightful)
This. These people aren't thinking about losing access to their own property, just some nebulous other people's 30%. Make it personal, and the survey would come out very differently.
Re: (Score:3)
I mean in the US, the government already owns about 28% of all the land - most of that largely undeveloped. Its not really that hard to just say "keep that publicly owned land public and don't build anything on it". Or at least keep building to a minimum (eg hiking trails with an occasional bathroom along the way).
Re: I fully support (Score:1)
Yeah sure. I live outside of Boston. A famously supply-limited housing market where rent for a multibedroom runs into the several thousand and half a million is the low end of the market for single family homes.
This is supposed to be bad.
I also live right next to thousands of acres of federally-owned wildlife refuge. And thousands of acres of state and town owned conservation land. None of which can be built on, and only a small fraction of which may be used for recreation.
This is supposed to be good.
Re: (Score:2)
Blame the bullshit zoning laws. There is plenty of housing to be had vertically, we don't need to destroy the entire natural world so everyone has a place to live.
Re: I fully support (Score:2)
Blame venture capital and Airbnb. There are multiple empty housing units for every person in the country. There are even sufficient empty housing units for every homeless person in California. But they are not on the market because they are not unaffordable to keep empty. And therefore also hold politicians responsible for not creating laws which make this unprofitable.
Re: I fully support (Score:2)
Most of the homeless in California are homeless because no landlord of any multifamily dwelling would rent to them. Even if the government picked up the tab no questions asked, the other rent-paying tenants who actually have their shit together would strenuously object to living next door to crazies, drunks, and drug addicts.
Time was, we would lock up the crazies who couldn't fend for themselves. So they wouldn't be getting themselves in trouble but also so they wouldn't be causing trouble for normal people
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the homeless in California are in that position for economic reasons. The loss of a job is number one. That can be from a sudden illness or accident, a layoff or an unexpected car problem. Without being able to quickly replace the income with a new job, people get evicted and start living in their car or on the street.
Mixed in with people who could sort themselves out if they only had a place to live; are people who are a hot mess. Due to addiction or mental illness they aren't going to seek out hel
Re: (Score:2)
> Most of the homeless in California are homeless because no landlord of any multifamily dwelling would rent to them. Even if the government picked up the tab no questions asked, the other rent-paying tenants who actually have their shit together would strenuously object to living next door to crazies, drunks, and drug addicts.
Are you serious with this? Skittish landlords are the reason for California's housing crisis? There's a housing shortage, that's why our housing costs are even worse than yours. People on the margins who could afford housing in most states are homeless here because housing is so expensive. This is a known thing [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_California
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough for most places. Places like Silicon Valley though should have gone vertical decades ago. At this point they're disrupting the better part of Northern California's real estate market. For Boston getting rid of Airbnb and real estate investment might do the trick though.
Re: (Score:2)
> There are even sufficient empty housing units for every homeless person in California. But they are not on the market because they are not unaffordable to keep empty.
I'm a little lost what you mean. Removing the double negative, they're affordable to keep empty? What's the scenario you're thinking of: a landlord buys a house or building and decides the incremental cost of renting out a unit is greater than the rent?
I've heard of people say they don't want to buy a property because they don't think they can rent it out for enough. Once they're made the purchase (and for everything but abandoned properties, every building is owned by someone who has made a purchase), I've
Re: (Score:2)
Increasing housing supply won't "trickle down" into lower housing costs. That's not how it works, but it's the myth that armchair economists, real estate investors, and politicians love to tell us.
The only way to have affordable rent and affordable houses is to regulate them. Allowing the free market continue to decide the price on a necessary resource is not likely to automatically push prices down. Because the people who own a home, be it a single home or an investor that owns an entire development, they
Re: (Score:2)
> Increasing housing supply won't "trickle down" into lower housing costs. That's not how it works, but it's the myth that armchair economists, real estate investors, and politicians love to tell us.
How do you figure? If I build more luxury houses, that lets rich people move out of more modest dwellings, freeing them up for people of more modest means. What makes you think that won't happen? It seems kind of inevitable to me.
The problem is there's so much pent up housing demand, it'll take a lot of building before prices measurably decline. What I'd expect to se first is the inventory of expensive houses start to increase and sales cycles lengthen. Only when houses are on the market for months before s
Re: (Score:2)
If you go down to state/county level, they own quite a bit of land maintened as public land for recreational purposes (biking/hiking/kayak) depending on where you live. I live right next to very large forest/trails maintained by my county I enjoy using. The further you get from a dense city, the more common this is. I suspect 30%+ of US land is not developed on. Not sure what it means about water, but the oceans are vast and not all parts of the ocean ideal for commercial use.
It's almost like... (Score:3)
...Individual people actually see a value in not destroying the planet and everything that lives on it.
Pretty obvious why corporations and (some) governments don't, especially when the corporation has a hand in the operations of the government.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, as long as that protection doesn't affect *their own* property. They support this protection as long as it's somebody else that loses out on access to land (or water).
Dystopian (Score:5, Insightful)
Only 30%? That's a dystopian nightmare. Imagine the world 70% covered with cities, oil rigs, and roads.
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly first thought that came to me as well. Said this out aloud to friends around lunch table, and the comment was - in most places nature is integral to what humans consider as "acceptable living conditions"; and that if we factor that in, the % of nature is higher. I dont think I see it that way. I suggested that herds of Bison, Elephants or Wilderbeast shaped the land they live in. The fragile unearthly landscape of places like Bryce Canyon in the US or the wilds of China exist because humans stayed a
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine it's your 70% that's torn down to make room for more nature.
Re: Dystopian (Score:2)
We only use like 1% of the world's area. No need to kick anyone out of their homes.
Re:Dystopian (Score:4, Informative)
It says 30% for "nature" - not 30% that isn't urbanized parking lot. The remaining 70% can be all sorts of utilized stuff that isn't really natural. EG farming takes up a lot of space. Its not natural, but I don't think anyone is too put off by a corn field or a peach orchard visually.
Re: (Score:2)
No, I think "set aside for nature" usually means no use by humans. So, no farming.
Though I suspect the respondents didn't really think about this for very long. How would they set aside a third of the UK, move everyone out of Scotland?
Re:Dystopian (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine an ocean 70% covered by cities of people... drowning?
poobah (Score:2)
It's just posturing. None of them will actually do anything about it.
But, as Brexit and Trump have taught us... (Score:2)
... people will vote for some stupid shit.
Yet another political football (Score:2)
What a load of crap. You know that whoever gets to decide what gets walled off from all of humanity forever is going to use it as a political weapon. Oh, you want to mine rare earth metals? Did you contribute to my last campaign? No? Well, then I guess that chunk of land with all the rare earths is going to be set aside for nature. STBY. Now if you'll excuse me, my taxpayer funded via an NGO private jet is waiting to take me to my estate in Hawaii.
It's one thing to think about this as a concept (Score:3)
It's another thing to forfeit *your* land to that 30%
Re: (Score:3)
Why should one have to forfeit it? We pay taxes for a reason. Any land that isn't already publicly owned and set aside for this purpose could be purchased from the current owners willingly (if they don't want to sell, buy equivalent acreage from someone who does).
Taxes are literally the way for all of us to collectively do things that it would be too financially painful to do individually.
Re: (Score:3)
We have that near where I live. About 180 square miles, supposedly blocked from public access as a watershed for the cities water supply. In reality, a private hunting and recreation reserve for rich fuckers in Land Rovers.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't have an issue with using natural land for hunting or recreation. Hunting when bag limits are set and laws are guided by biologists isn't harmful to an area.
Humans are a part of nature. Our structures and creations are not. Us going out and walking in the forest or taking a limited amount of game (basically legally limiting humans to an amount of predation that is sustainable) isn't throwing the ecosystem out of whack.
Re: (Score:2)
Until someone comes after you to fund the purchase of that 30%. And then tells you that you aren't one of the select few who gets the key card for the electronic gate.
Vote for the correct party next time.
Polls don't vote (Score:3)
It doesn't matter what the public tells a pollster. What matters is what they do when they are filling out those little bubbles every two years.
Also what matters is who gets to vote. The supreme Court dismantled the voting Rights act. And voter suppression is now off the hook with millions of people unable to vote because of illegal signature and voter registration challenges and millions more unable to vote because of multi-hour wait times at polls.
Stalin was wrong it's not who counts the votes that matters, it's who gets to vote.
Polls do not matter for most of earth (Score:2)
The powerful are hardly impacted by popular opinion. 95+% of Americans want minimal gun restrictions and close to ZERO gets done (any gains are undone within 8 years.)
Stalin was still right; he was just so used to being openly evil. You indirectly control the count by controlling WHO can be counted... Even more subtle (or oblivious to slow people) you group voters such that you choose the voters instead of them choosing: gerrymander. Take away voting rights (slaves, convicts, immigrants.)
Yes, I would give
I think the thing you're missing (Score:2)
Is that it does not matter what people say they want if they don't act on it. That's my point.
It doesn't matter if 95% of people want more gun restrictions if all it takes is a two-week ad blitz threatening to take away guns entirely to scare them into voting for tough on crime politicians who are going to stab them in the back economically.
People prioritize certain things at certain times based on certain bits of information put in front of them. Often that information is propaganda. It has been re
Re: (Score:2)
I agree entirely with your first sentence, but you're wrong about the Court and VRA. All they said was that after 40 years, now that pretty much every Southern city is run by a black mayor and council, that it was an unconstitutional burden on the people who live there now to have to get permission to redistrict. That's the part that was stricken, pre-clearance for redistricting. It was a rule created to deal with people who are now mostly dead and all out of power, not me, a Yankee who moved down 20 yea
Re: (Score:2)
> Also, the signature and registration challenges ARE legal. They are an anti-cheating mechanism. A necessary one, really.
Are you familiar with what happened in Alabama? In 2011 Alabama instituted a voter ID law restricting the forms of ID required to vote to a very small list, primarily relying on the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issues drivers licenses. The politicians argued that this was not an barrier to voting, because even if poor people don't own or drive cars, they could still get a government-issued ID at any Department of Motor Vehicles office. The very next year , Alabama closed all of the DMV offices in eigh
I can't remember where, maybe Mississippi (Score:2)
But one of the red States was on track to do massive voter suppression using voter ID and had the back down because the son of a bitch that was pushing it died and his daughter found his notes where he talked about specifically doing it because of stopping black people from voting and she gave those notes to the court. Naturally that killed it there.
They destroyed the law (Score:2)
You can justify it with whatever helps you sleep at night but they absolutely destroyed the voting Rights act. It no longer has any capacity for enforcement.
The fact that you don't understand that it was the only thing between you and widespread voter suppression should you ever disagree with the ruling class and the ruling elite is your problem now.
You have some ideas you probably picked up when you were a kid that you need to deconstruct. Good luck with that. America's democracy is counting on you
Thought we already had that. (Score:3)
Total land area 149e6 sq km, 30% of that is 50e6 sq km. Antarctica is 14e6 sq km and off limits so that's a good portion of cordoning off land. Siberia is another 14e6 sq km, now we are up to ~30 sq km. The total area of all national parks is 18.8e6 sq km bringing the total to ~50 million sq km. So yeah, already there.
I'd imagine that the ocean is easy to free up space since most of it isn't being utilized.
I hope these people can rest easy because we already have what they want.
Re: (Score:3)
Antarctica I'd say doesn't really count towards the percentage total. You'd need 30% per region, not 30% of all the land on the planet with a large percentage of that being just the land that isn't of human use.
Antarctica is damned near uninhabitable. Very little plant life and the animal life is relegated to coastal semi-aquatic animals. The interior is devoid of complex life.
Of course in global warming keeps up in a few thousand years it might be a great place to live - with everyone claiming to have "
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, well how much of Eurasia is Siberia or the Gobi? How much of Africa is the Sahara? How much of Australia is outback? How much of North America is Canadian tundra?
And how much of this matters? Is Brazil and her neighbors going to cordon off the Amazon? Nope! This is an idea that means nothing, because the only people who share it are in places where it doesn't matter. Brazilians want the land currently occupied by the Amazon for other things. Not one person polled by The Guardian can change t
Followup question? (Score:3)
Would YOU be willing to give up 30% of your land and property to be set aside for nature? Everybody thinks bald eagles and wolves are amazing, until they are eating your pets and livestock.
Re: (Score:2)
> Would YOU be willing to give up 30% of your land and property to be set aside for nature?
Done. More than three quarters of my place is left as wild forest. We have bear, cougar and bald eagles hanging around.
About those bald eagles: They don't really require wilderness. We have a couple of them that hang out in trees next to I-405, waiting for road kill. They also built a nest on top of the cellular companies 3G tower. Which blocked them from upgrading that site to 5G. Or get cited for interfering with the nest. Hence, shitty 5G coverage at my house.
Such [1]noble [vice.com] birds.
[1] https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5ca4ea5db6ac7b0007549b8b/lede/1554311790099-2026952550_43faa0df95_b.jpeg
Wow... (Score:2)
Lots of people posting here saying something like "If they had to give up their land, then blah blah blah.
That sounds to me like a lot of people who don't give a flying fuck about nature trying to make themselves feel better by pretending that, deep down inside, everybody else is just as bad as they are.
You know what ? It would be perfectly possible to put 30% of the world's total land area under some form of protection without anybody losing their land. In some countries it could even be as much 90%, which
Re: (Score:2)
I just looked that up - 13% of the US is protected land (parks, wildlife preserves, wetlands...).
My first thought was, "Oh, so Antarctica, the Sahara, the Gobi... am I at 30% yet? No? Then whatever Tundra doesn't have oil or metal underneath."
All that could be protected and nobody would notice. Or care. There are a lot of places we can't really live and wouldn't want to work. I doubt that's the sort of outcome the proponents would have wanted, but then it's their fault for rubbing a lamp without t
Several years ago ... (Score:2)
... 60 Minutes had a program about some retired Hollywood big shot who had just driven to the end of a road somewhere in Montana (I think), purchased the property and built a ranch. He then proceeded to go to his congressman and demand that everything beyond his ranch be designated wilderness area. With the public access restrictions that entails.
I just thought how the person just down the road had been thinking the same thing before Mr Big Shot moved in. And, if the designation falls through, the next pe
Nature is a means to a cause (Score:2)
For the moment biosphere collapse must be prevented to save civilisation, but elevating conservation to an inherent moral good goes too far.
Leave the knee jerk conservationism to the conservatives, be a little more progressive. Friends don't let animal friends be eaten alive by predators and parasites if they can help it, nor die for that matter. Eventually nature must go, it's the only moral outcome.
Re: (Score:2)
That
Was
AWESOME!
Very funny, thank you.
City Dwellers (Score:2)
The overwhelming majority of the public lives is big cities and knows they won't personally have to lose any real estate to 30% for nature legislation. I'll bet they don't support the taxes to purchase land at owner's asking price for this purpose. It's more of a "those other people will be unhappy, and I'm fine with that" opinion.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'll bet they don't support the taxes to purchase land at owner's asking price for this purpose.
Don't have to. The city/county/state/fed can just invoke eminent domain and pay fair market value instead of whatever inflated sentimental price people think they can demand.
Start with undeveloped non-privately-held areas (Score:1)
Don't mess with privately-held land or water or land or water that's already being used for something or is planned for future use: Start with government-owned land and water, international waters, and land not owned by any nation-state that's not already developed or planned for some other use.
That will relieve some of the naysayers.
Almost all of the major oceans are international waters. Antarctica is covered by treaties already.
Within nation-states, there are government-owned lands and waters that are
Drill baby drill!! (Score:2)
If oil is found, some company wants to build a pipeline, or some shitstain wants to graze their cattle without paying the associated fees - conservatives will have a conniption fit if anyone tries to stop said parties from destroying the land.
Generalities are easy. Specifics are hard. (Score:2)
I'm sure anyone can look at the globe, or even their region, and come up with at least 30% they'd be happy setting aside for nature. I sure can.
The problem is that we're going to disagree over which 30%.
Ranchers: the 30% which isn't suitable for grazing.
Oil barons: the 30% which doesn't have oil underneath.
Miners: the 30% which doesn't have useful ore.
Fishing fleets: the 30% which we've already depleted of fish.
Developers: any 30% we don't own and want to put houses on.
PG&E: the 30% we don't need to ru
Farming (Score:2)
70% of farm land is devoted to raising animals or feed for animals.
One tenth of the land devoted to animal agriculture could grow more calories and protein than the current animals produce.
Lots of potential there to re-wild farm land.
Trump Challenge Accepted (Score:2, Funny)
Trump will see this as a challenge to pave over USA and declare plants as a dangerous risk to our health
Re: (Score:2)
Trump's full slogan is "American first! Strip mine and clear cut all the other countries later!"