― By Dona Bertarelli
As this year draws to a close, attention often turns to what lies ahead. For biodiversity, the coming years will be decisive, not only for what we protect, but for how we choose to change.
As I stand still, looking at the world that sustains us — this miracle of life we so often take for granted — I think about what it will truly take to protect 30% of our land and ocean, and what this commitment asks of us beyond targets and declarations.
After years dedicated to biodiversity conservation, science-based advocacy, and collective action with extraordinary partners, one thing has become clear to me: the hardest work is not only out there — it is within us.
We know the science. We know what ecosystems need to recover, what resilience looks like, and which thresholds must not be crossed. We know that protecting 30×30 is not a symbolic ambition, but a biological necessity for climate stability, food systems, and life itself.
And yet, knowledge alone has never been enough when it remains disconnected from values, responsibility, and a sense of belonging to the living world.
Change asks something deeper of us, especially from those of us who have more room to act.
This is uncomfortable terrain.
Because change is not about perfection and it never has been. It is not easy or fast. It is effort. Conscious effort. Repeated effort. The humility to accept that we will stumble, and the courage to reset the bar anyway.
Over the next five years, I believe the most meaningful conservation work will happen daily, and often invisibly:
• in the habits we choose to unlearn
• in the more resilient ways of thinking we deliberately build
• in how we engage with the world around us
Advocacy remains essential. Policy, protection, enforcement, and science must continue — urgently and at scale. But their impact will only be durable if they are accompanied by deeper shifts in perspective and responsibility.
For me, the path to 2030 is no longer only about defending biodiversity in the world around us; it is about recognising my place within it — as a human who is not separate from nature, but part of it. And it is this understanding that makes education so essential: not education as information alone, but as transmission of knowledge, connection, and love for the living world that future generations will inherit.
Because real change has never been viral. It is slow, demanding, and deeply personal. And that may be exactly why it lasts.
