-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email This article originally appeared on The Revelator . Ocean ecosystems and the marine wildlife that depend on them are under threat as never before. Between overfishing, climate change, plastic pollution, and habitat destruction, it’s a bad time to be a prawn, cod, seabird, or whale.
There’s no single silver bullet solution to the biodiversity crisis, but in recent years, many people in the environmental community have focused on the goal of “ 30 x 30 ”: protecting 30% of the planet by the year 2030. Many nations have made promises toward that goal, including the United States, which has adapted it into the “ America the Beautiful ” initiative. Measurable goals like this provide nations with clear, quantifiable conservation goals that others in the international community can follow, verify, or use to identify shortfalls and push for more action.
Related Stewards of the kelp forests: New research reveals how sea otters dramatically influence the climate At the same time, many experts warn that number-based targets like “protect 30%” lend themselves to incentives to arguably- kinda-sorta protect as much as possible, rather than protecting the most ecologically important areas. Governments, for instance, can use what’s euphemistically referred to as “creative accounting” — counting things as protected that probably should not be considered protected. Two new research papers examine some of this creative accounting in.