22 APRIL- Plan to “protect” 30% of Earth by 2030 will be disastrous for people and planet- 300 million people could lose their landThe 30x30 plan will be the biggest land grab in history. Still from Survival's new campaign video. © Survival
Survival International today (Earth Day) launched a major new campaign to stop the plan to turn 30% of Earth into
Protected Areas by 2030.
The plan by world leaders and conservation organizations is expected to be discussed at President Biden’s Leaders’
Summit on Climate (April 22-23), and to be agreed at the COP15 summit in China in October.
But Survival International has warned that it would constitute “the biggest land grab in history.” Three hundred million people stand to lose their land and livelihood, most of them tribal and indigenous peoples.
The organization has labelled the plan the #BigGreenLie.
Fiore Longo, head of Survival’s conservation campaign, said today: “The plan to carve out 30% of the earth as ‘protected
areas’ is a #BigGreenLie. It is a plan without scientific basis, that will do nothing to combat climate change or the
loss of biodiversity, but will increase human suffering and the destruction of nature. It is a deadly distraction from
what is urgently needed to secure human diversity and all biodiversity: the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights to
their land.”
The campaign is being launched with a new video, narrated by Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, that exposes the #BigGreenLie.
More than 230 organizations and experts have signed a letter expressing concerns over the 30% target.These Khadia men were thrown off their land after it was turned into a protected area. They lived for months under
plastic sheets. Millions more face this fate if the 30% plan goes ahead. © Survival
Among Survival’s key objections to the plan are:
- Land-grabbing: if the plan goes ahead, 300 million people stand to lose their lands, which will be turned into
Protected Areas. The creation of almost every Protected Area in Africa and Asia has involved the theft of people’s land
without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Dozens more stand to be created if 30x30 goes ahead.
- Abuses: Tribal and indigenous peoples whose lands have already been turned into Protected Areas have been the subject
of appalling abuses going back decades, including rape, torture and murder. Most of these abuses have been committed by
rangers backed and funded by big conservation organizations including WWF and WCS.
- A false “wilderness” solution: The 30x30 plan is just the latest plan produced by Western conservationists that
erroneously sees tribal peoples’ lands as “wilderness” to be preserved for the common good, rather than as land they
have managed and protected over time. Tribal peoples stand to be evicted and dispossessed to provide the comforting -
but false - illusion of a solution to a problem they didn’t create.
Survival’s Fiore Longo said today: “This is a critical moment. If world leaders will meet on 22 April and discuss business as usual, the
outcome will be more false, unscientific, racist and colonial proposals, such as the 30% project and nature-based solutions.
“But outside the corridors of power, criticism is building. More and more people see clearly that this will be a
catastrophe from a human rights perspective: indigenous and other local people in the Global South will pay the price
for environmental destruction they didn’t cause. And from an environmental perspective, it simply won’t work: kicking
indigenous people off their land to create Protected Areas won’t help the climate. On the contrary, indigenous peoples
are the best guardians of the natural world and an essential part of human diversity that is a key to protecting
biodiversity. Their land rights must be recognized.”