CBD COP17: What does it really mean to protect 30% of the planet

Under the campaign Ocean Justice, the Rainbow Warrior visits Thailand to campaign for community-led marine protected areas in order to protect the ocean and coastal communities' rights.

Along the coast of southern Thailand, in the neighboring districts of Chana and Thepa, there is a name for the stretch of sea that begins just beyond the shore: Talae Na Baan, the "Homefront Sea" - it tells a lot about the relationship between the small-scale fishing communities who live there and the waters they have lived alongside for generations.

The sea puts food on the table and provides an income, but it is also woven into family histories, memories and a sense of home. The relationship goes both ways: communities have created no-fishing zones, built traditional Zung-Kor artificial reefs that provide shelter for marine life, established crab banks to help populations recover, and monitor the health of coastal ecosystems themselves.

The local people of Chana (Chana Rak Thin movement) walked to the Government House in Bangkok to ask the government to uphold their promise to pause the industrial project until environmental impact assessment is completed

Khairiyah "Yah" Rahmanyah, the daughter of a fisherman from Ban Suan Gong, in Chana, knows this relationship intimately. She grew up with the sea shaping almost every part of her life.

The house I live in, the clothes that I wear, my shoes, my school uniform, my tuition fees, even the bike and the toys I own, it all comes from the sea. My whole life of happiness, fond memories, every story that made me who I am, are all from the sea.

Today, Yah is a young leader and environmental communicator with the Chana Rak Thin movement. She grew up fighting alongside her community to protect their coastline from industrial development, including a gas pipeline project that threatened local ecosystems and led to her father's arrest after a peaceful protest, and more recent plans for a deep-sea port.

A very different landscape tells a similar story. In the Brazilian Amazon, Apurinã families in the Caititu Indigenous Territory in the Amazonas State are using agroforestry to restore degraded land, grow food and medicinal plants, and keep traditional knowledge alive. There, too, protecting biodiversity is closely tied to the people who live in the territory and to the knowledge, rights and ways of life that have shaped it.

Overflight within the boundaries of the Caititu Indigenous Territory, in the Brazilian Amazon

Chana and Caititu are very different places, but they bring us to a question the world is now confronting at a much larger scale: what does it really mean to protect nature?

30×30: Beyond the numbers

In 2022, governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), including a commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of the world's land and sea by 2030, and to put at least 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by the same year. Together, these 30×30 targets are about much more than the amount of territory covered.

Greenpeace visited Caititu Indigenous Land, home of the Apurinã people in Lábrea, Amazonas, to document how Indigenous-led solutions protect the Amazon and its peoples.

For conservation, this means areas that are effectively conserved and managed, ecologically representative, connected and equitably governed, recognising Indigenous and traditional territories where applicable, while recognising and respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. For restoration, it means helping degraded ecosystems recover in ways that enhance biodiversity, ecological integrity and ecosystem functions. For both, Direct Access Financing is essential to support community-led conservation and restoration, and must be recognised as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of the KMGBF 2030 targets.

Four years later, the challenge is turning that promise into reality

This October, governments are meeting at the UN Biodiversity conference, CBD COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia for the collective review of progress in implementing the global biodiversity framework. The conference comes at a crucial moment: halfway between the agreement reached in 2022 and its 2030 deadline for the implementation of its 23 targets.

Way of life of the Chana people at Suan Kong Beach, Chana District, Songkhla Province, Thailand.

Chana and Thepa show what is at stake. Communities are already managing and restoring their coastal ecosystems and seeking formal recognition for the areas they protect. Yet without stronger legal recognition, these areas remain vulnerable to industrial development. Delivering 30×30 therefore means not only recognising these community-led solutions, but ensuring that their rights and governance systems are recognised and protected too.

What real protection in action looks like

In the Caititu Indigenous Territory, Apurinã families are showing another side of what protecting biodiversity can mean. Caititu lies on the edge of one of the Amazon's major deforestation frontiers, surrounded by growing pressure from cattle ranching, agribusiness, fires and land speculation. Yet much of its forest remains standing, with its ecological functions still largely intact. In areas that have been degraded, communities are using agroforestry to help bring the forest back.

Caititu Indigenous Land: solutions and practices that ensure forest conservation, well-being, and income generation.

Across 21 villages, 37 agroforestry systems now combine crops such as cassava, banana, açaí, cupuaçu and medicinal plants with forest restoration. An Indigenous fire brigade helps protect the territory during the dry season, while women and elders pass knowledge about plants, cultivation and healing to younger generations.

Through Agroforestry Systems, we guarantee food and wealth for our tables. It has strengthened our knowledge of planting and medicinal uses," says Maria dos Anjos Apurinã, known as the "Queen of Agroforestry Systems.

Caititu and Chana show what the huge added value of Indigenous and community-controlled ecosystem management can look like in practice. And similar solutions are already taking shape around the world.

Across the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are already leading solutions to protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity. Greenpeace's new Real Community Solutions Map is an interactive platform that brings some of these experiences together, showing how rights, community leadership, financial support and healthy ecosystems can go hand in hand.

As governments work to turn 30×30 into reality, these solutions deserve to be recognised, supported and learned from.

Explore the Real Community Solutions Map.

Jaqueline Sordi is the Communications Lead for the Tropical Forests campaign at Greenpeace International