The Land Half of 30x30 Is 12.4 Points Short. Indigenous Territories Cover an Additional 13.6%.

The Protected Planet Report 2024 — the first global stocktake of Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, compiled by UNEP-WCMC and IUCN — reported global coverage of protected and conserved areas at:

• 17.6% of terrestrial and inland waters
• 8.4% of marine and coastal areas

The target is 30% of both, by 2030.

On land, that leaves a gap of about 12.4 percentage points — roughly 16.7 million km² still to be brought into protected and conserved area networks. IUCN's framing: coverage needs to double on land and triple at sea.

Now the number in the same report that almost nobody quoted.

13.6%

Indigenous and traditional territories cover at least an additional 13.6% of global terrestrial areas.

Read "additional." These are lands not already inside the 17.6%.

Set the two figures beside each other:

13.6 is larger than 12.4.

Arithmetically, the entire terrestrial 30x30 gap is smaller than the Indigenous and traditional territory that already exists and is not being counted.

Why this is not the solution it looks like

That arithmetic is real, and the conclusion people reach for — just count it, and we're done — is wrong in a way worth being precise about.

1. Counting is not protecting. Adding 13.6% to a spreadsheet changes nothing on the ground. This is the exact failure we documented in the 30x30 quality gap: the world already reports 9.6% ocean protection while only 3.2% is effectively protected, because declaration and protection were allowed to be the same word.

Reaching 30% by reclassifying land that already exists would be the largest single instance of that error ever committed.

2. It would be taking, not counting. Target 3 does not merely require 30%. It requires the 30% be achieved equitably and with respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

A state counting Indigenous territory toward its own conservation target, without the free, prior and informed consent of the people whose territory it is, is appropriating a result. It is claiming credit for someone else's stewardship — and doing so under a target whose text was written specifically to prevent that.

The 13.6% is not unclaimed. It is claimed by the people living on it.

3. The direction of the argument matters. The finding is not "here is 13.6% of land the world can annex to hit its number." It is: "13.6% of the planet is already being conserved by people the accounting does not see."

Those are opposite claims from the same statistic. One is a land grab with a conservation label. The other is a recognition problem.

The thing we barely know at all

Buried in the same report is a figure that should stop the conversation:

• Governance has been assessed for only 0.2% of protected area coverage on land.
• And less than 0.01% at sea.

For roughly 99.8% of the world's protected land, the global database does not have documented information on who governs it.

We know the area. We do not know the arrangement. Whether a protected area is run by a national agency, a private trust, a community, or nobody at all is, at global scale, largely unrecorded.

Relatedly: less than 4% of coverage is governed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities — a figure that sits oddly against the 13.6% of land they hold as territory, and against the Amazon evidence that their lands are the best-preserved in the basin.

The best-performing conservation model on Earth accounts for under 4% of the world's formal conservation estate.

What is actually in the 17.6%

For scale: 302,934 protected areas and 6,464 OECMs have been reported, covering 54.29 million km² in total. On land, 284,242 protected areas cover 22.06 million km², with 6,253 OECMs adding 1.59 million km².

OECMs — other effective area-based conservation measures — are areas delivering conservation outcomes without being designated protected areas: a military buffer zone, a watershed, a community-managed forest. They are a sensible category, and they are also the flexible one. When a target is scored on area, the category with the loosest definition is the one that grows.

And 51 countries and territories have already exceeded 30% coverage on land. The target is achievable. It has been achieved, repeatedly, by countries that decided to.

A note on the numbers moving

This report puts marine coverage at 8.4%. In our 30x30 gap article we cited 9.6% from the World Database on Protected Areas as of January 2026, against MPAtlas's 3.2% effectively protected.

These are not in conflict. 8.4% is the October 2024 stocktake; 9.6% is the database fifteen months later. Coverage grew. Both are right for their dates.

We also note a small discrepancy in the record: the report is described by some sources as issued 28 October 2024, and UNEP-WCMC's own pre-announcement gave 29 October 2024. We use the publisher's date and flag the difference rather than pick silently.

Why this is on AEDO1

The headline finding of the first 30x30 stocktake is we are behind. That was predictable and it was reported everywhere.

The finding underneath is stranger and more useful: a chunk of land larger than the entire remaining gap is already being conserved, by people whose governance we have not written down, under a target that explicitly requires their rights be respected.

The temptation is going to be enormous — as 2030 approaches and the numbers do not move — to close that gap on paper. It should be resisted, and the reason it should be resisted is in the target's own text.