The 30 x 30 program is a plan advanced by international radical environmental activists to permanently protect 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, in their natural state.

Proponents argue climate impacts are human-caused, and permanently preserving 30 per cent of the world is necessary to reverse climate change. 

This action must be taken immediately, they claim, to avoid impacts on the ecosystem and wildlife. However, the science and data do not justify these extreme policy measures. 

This concept was first officially advanced in the 1990s when the United Nations Biodiversity Treaty called for protecting 17 per cent of the land and ocean. The Canadian government has been working toward this goal through the “Canada Target 1” initiative. 

As we move closer to 2030, the international community has changed this target to 30 per cent, and the Government of Canada has readjusted its target to 25 per cent by 2025.  

“The ultimate goal is hard to miss. This is about controlling the land, our oceans and the people.”

In America, the secretary of commerce proclaimed 30 per cent is only the beginning. This is the first step toward achieving what is known in the environmental community as the “Half Earth” agenda, where 50 per cent of the world is to be set aside for nature.  

Nine years, 400 million acres

If this is beginning to sound more like a marketing campaign and less like science-based policy, that is because the goal is not about conservation, it is about controlling the resources. For instance, in America, proponents claim we are losing a football field of nature every 30 seconds, which translates into approximately 3,000 acres a day and 11 million acres in 10 years. Yet, to reach the 30 per cent goal, Americans must permanently protect an additional 400 million acres in nine short years.  

The 30 x 30 agenda and the “climate crisis,” is built on flawed science. All of the projections—such as over one million species going extinct in the coming decades and 30 per cent of the Earth must be set aside to keep global warming below 2 ̊—come from computer models populated by selective data and a large portion of subjective assumptions that produce wildly inaccurate projections. 

Nevertheless, all nations are being called to fundamentally change how we use our land and oceans, which produce the food, fibre, energy and minerals our world needs. 

Proponents are working hard to present this program as one of “conservation,” but the ultimate goal is hard to miss. This is about controlling the land, our oceans and the people. 

Margaret Byfield is the executive director of American Stewards of Liberty (ASL). She was raised on a large cow calf operation in central Nevada purchased by her parents, Wayne and Jean Hage in 1978. Her family experienced unprecedented regulatory pressures that eventually led to Hage v. United States, the first federal lands grazing case filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims. The case was in litigation for 27 years, during which time Margaret launched the property rights organization Stewards of the Range. Stewards merged with the American Land Foundation in 2009 forming ASL.

Published in PIPELINE OBSERVER Winter 2022