COVID, climate change, global conflict. How can we protect wild nature when so much else occupies our attention? The greatest challenge to biodiversity conservation work anywhere in the world today is finding the bandwidth to get things off the drawing board and onto the ground. 

Every person I work with on biodiversity keeps repeating the same mantra—“transformative change”—to describe the dramatic actions needed to shift human behavior toward a more sustainable partnership with nature. Yet it’s been hard to sustain the global effort to protect biodiversity—especially since international meetings to advance the Convention on Biological Diversity have been delayed for two years due to the pandemic.    

So I was elated when, in his first week in office, President Biden issued an executive order that set out guiding principles for American conservation in the 21st century. Biden hit all the right notes: Framed by the climate crisis, this new vision was going to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, conserve at least 30 percent of US lands and waters by 2030 to protect biodiversity, and deliver environmental justice to disadvantaged people and communities. 

The Biden administration moved swiftly to begin to flesh out the details of this sweeping vision. In June 2021, it released the “America the Beautiful” report, followed by an update in December 2021. Cabinet officials promised to pursue a collaborative, inclusive approach across and between federal agencies, states, and local governments. They pledged science-based strategies to meet emissions, biodiversity, and justice goals that incorporated feedback from many voices—Native American tribes, scientists, businesses, environmental groups, and citizens.  

It was a solid start. But 50 House Democrats and a host of green groups wanted the administration to go further. In February 2022, they wrote a letter to President Biden demanding a full-fledged national biodiversity strategy. Soon after, a large group of social and environmental activists trumpeted support for an Environmental Justice for All Act that would transform “the way environmental policy is implemented in the US.” Facing this pressure from friends and allies, the administration responded in April 2022 with a funding strategy that promises a billion dollars to bankroll America the Beautiful.  

As a scientist who studies social and ecological connections within environmental issues, I support all these essential goals. But I want to know more. How exactly are these admirable aims to be achieved on the ground, in the waters, and in peoples’ lives?

So far, the sum total of all this effort is difficult to detect. Yes, the administration is attempting to do the right thing. But if you study the details in all these documents, you will discover that America the Beautiful is long on vision and short on substance. And “vision” is not going to get us where we need to go unless we apply it to work on the ground. 

Here are four questions the administration needs to answer sooner rather than later.

1. We need to protect more lands and waters, but how? 

The United States currently protects about 12 percent of the country’s lands and 19 percent of marine waters. That’s a wonderful historical accomplishment—but it’s not nearly enough habitat for plants and animals, especially in the era of climate change. For decades, scientists have warned that US protected areas are inadequate for safeguarding biodiversity and maintaining a stable climate. So, a main goal of America the Beautiful is to increase the amount of US protected lands to 30 percent by 2030 (a.k.a. 30x30). When you crunch the numbers, you find that 30 percent means we need to protect additional lands equal to an area about the size of Alaska. Even diehard environmental advocates recognize that we don’t have the political capacity to do this today—not when the Republican Party has become so opposed to Congress passing national parks and wilderness bills. America the Beautiful has the general numbers right but so far is silent on specifics of how to get the job accomplished.

2. What counts as conservation?

If we cannot agree on how to protect more lands, perhaps we can conserve them—which likely explains why America the Beautiful has substituted “conserve” for “protect” in its 30x30 vision. Historically in the United States, landscape protection (or preservation) on federal lands means something quite different from conservation. “Protect” means that species and ecosystems come first; a national park or federal wilderness area are classic examples. “Conserve” means that many human uses of nature (logging, grazing, etc.) are accommodated, even if habitats are impacted; national forests are the best examples. 

This isn’t just a matter of semantics. American the Beautiful largely prioritizes conservation. Yet the scientific standard for 30x30 remains protection. If we are serious about going beyond parks and wildlands and enlisting land managers, tribes, and property owners to incorporate actions for biodiversity into their everyday work, then America the Beautiful better set clear standards.  

Everyone understands that a national park protects a landscape. But what counts as “conserved”? Replanting a clearcut? Plugging an oil well? Repairing the roof on a national park visitor center? Building a new trail in metro Chicago? California’s state-level 30x30 plan clearly defines what counts as conservation: lands and waters that are “durably protected and managed to sustain functioning ecosystems and the diversity of life they support.” But so far, America the Beautiful has offered no definition of its ultimate goals. 

3. How to measure success?

Even if the administration had clearer definitions of biodiversity and justice-oriented conservation, no long-term plan for people and nature will work unless we can measure and monitor our actions, and then be ready to make adjustments based on what we learn. Tom Cors, national lands director for the Nature Conservancy, an organization that has pioneered quantitative measures to manage nature, recently told me that his group has had “very good outreach to the interagency committee coordinating work on America the Beautiful.” Yet despite the existence of many metrics from which to choose, the administration has been slow to select an evaluation framework to guide its efforts. In other words, no administration report describes how to measure success.  

4. How to go from quantitative to qualitative? 

While we do need to focus on metrics, definitions, and acreage, we also have to be careful not to lose sight of the fact that America the Beautiful’s big three goals of mitigating climate change, protecting biodiversity, and addressing environmental justice cannot be reduced to a numbers game. If we want to protect nature, we have to be strategic and recognize that species and ecosystems under threat are not distributed equally around America. Ecologists have already identified the biodiversity hotspots that need to be prioritized and protected first. They include much of California, the Mountain West, and the swamps and coastal areas of the South along the Gulf of Mexico. (You can find a great map here.) But the administration’s plan has yet to make choices about priorities. 

The same applies to managing lands to reduce climate change impacts. Some lands sequester more carbon stocks in vegetation and soils than other lands. And environmental justice would also be better served if we could identify hotspots of injustice so that we could prioritize actions in the specific places that need it. Researchers have already identified places where climate, biodiversity, and human access to nature goals overlap and co-benefits could be gained. Such findings need to be incorporated into America the Beautiful. 

Here are some answers 

It has been a year since America the Beautiful was released, and we still don’t know what qualifies as conservation, how to measure progress, or how to link the social and ecological parts of the plan. We are told that various interagency working groups are busy working on these questions. And yes, connecting the dots between climate, biodiversity, and justice is a huge task. But we need Biden’s ambitious vision linked to actions that can be taken today. Here are some responses to the questions I posed above.  

Change the frame.

If boosting protected areas on federal lands by itself cannot get us to 30x30, what else can we do? We can begin by questioning our traditional American frame that splits land into “protected” and “unprotected” categories. If we manage to conserve 30 percent of wild nature, does that give us license to use unsustainably the other 70 percent of the United States that produces our food, lumber, and living places? Cutting-edge science says no. Going forward, we need to account for climate, biodiversity, and justice for all people on all lands—private and public, farm and forest.

Protect working lands.

Many Americans have a strong stewardship ethic, but we cannot solve climate, biodiversity, and justice problems without doing more to protect nature and people on working lands. Why? More than half of all federal public land is dedicated to resource extraction. In the West alone, unprotected federal forests harbor at least 24 percent of the lands we need to meet climate and biodiversity goals. The president can use executive authority to address this issue, but actions must be well coordinated across the country to have an impact. 

Also, about 60 percent of the United States is privately owned. These lands provide some 50 percent of the habitat for species at risk of extinction; 75 percent of all wetlands; 30 percent of our drinking water; and 100 percent of our food. There are many ways to ensure that private lands contribute to America the Beautiful while still yielding benefits for owners. Here are some strategies that would yield outsized benefits. 

Reforest to capture carbon.

If there was concerted action to reforest damaged public and private lands and manage both ownerships for carbon storage, we could capture up to 10 percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions. Thousands of jobs would also be created in the process of reforesting degraded lands. With coordination, these tasks alone probably provide the biggest bang for the buck of any climate and job-friendly action. 

Create sustainable food systems.

Agriculture takes up a little more than half of all US lands, and industrial agriculture has outsized impacts on people and nature. But we still don’t manage farmlands for greenhouse gas emissions, and we continue to convert complex natural ecosystems into single-crop fields. Agriculture is also often the site of systemic racial injustices—from the Agriculture Department’s unequal treatment of Black farmers to the routine exposure of (typically Latino) farmworkers to toxic pesticides.

There are so many ways we can improve our food systems. Simply planting cover crops before we grow corn, soy, wheat, and rice would keep a huge amount of carbon out of the air. Many studies show that restoring wild plants and animals to habitat in and around fields would bolster ecological health on farms and begin to reconnect agricultural lands to the wild. Experts say that consumer waste and dietary choices are also key to climate and equity strategies. The administration is already working to help Americans reduce food waste given that about 40 percent of all food purchased in the United States is thrown away. But the volatile politics of addressing meat consumption remains to be dealt with. 

Agriculture also accounts for one of every 10 jobs in the United States. Yet, compared to ecological food systems research, relatively little is known about how environmental injustices specifically impact farmer livelihoods, how more sustainable farm-to-market supply chains can be built, and ways to promote healthy diet choices. Pushed by America the Beautiful, the USDA is developing new diversity programs. But my back-of-the-envelope figures show that less than half of 1 percent of the USDA budget goes to strengthen diversity in agriculture. 

Fund this work—with real money.

The Biden administration has a vision for people and nature that goes far beyond what any US leader has ever offered. Public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the 30x30 vision. But, so far, this inspiring vision hasn’t been backed with an equally inspiring budget allocation. According to last year’s year-end update, in 2021 about 43 percent of America the Beautiful funding went to repair federal lands infrastructure and create better access to recreation. That’s important work, and it may be good for jobs, but this has nothing to do with climate and biodiversity and may have little to do with social equity. We have to get real about strategic funding for climate, justice, and biodiversity. Yet no one knows how much it would cost to meet any one of America the Beautiful’s big three goals.  

You can look at the price tag of just one action in a single state to see the scale of what might be needed. Florida recently allocated $400 million for one year of ongoing construction of the premier conservation corridor network in the United States. But when I asked Dr. Reed Noss, who helped design the network, about funding, his best guess was that “we need at least $500 million a year for the next 20 years.”  

Or you can focus on one federal agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service. A fraction of USFWS’s annual $1.6 billion budget is spent protecting imperiled species that aren’t on the endangered species list—a miserly $24 million a year. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, it would take a tripling of that figure to help out the species that are dying for federal protection. 

These are just two examples. You get the point: Add up all the costs of land and water conservation, climate resiliency, and environmental justice actions, and the price tag of America the Beautiful will easily be in the tens of billions. 

Luckily, we’re a rich country and we have the monies—we just have to spend them more wisely. One smart way of funding conservation measures is to repurpose the annual $650+ billion in harmful subsidies that prop up the US fossil fuel sector and industrial agriculture. That alone would radically transform how we do business with the natural world. 

If the Biden administration is serious about achieving the 30x30 vision, it has to include real money in its next budget proposal and work with Congress to allocate the funds. 

Reading over America the Beautiful, I discovered that phrase again, “transformative change”—the root idea that is on the lips of everybody engaged with these challenging issues. It’s true that this work is immensely challenging, and time is not on our side. For my own part, I know that I’m going to double down on actions to help fix the flaws in America the Beautiful. 

The Biden administration has provided a clear vision of progress: Since we cannot solve climate, justice, or biodiversity issues in isolation, we must solve them together. The job now is to help the White House achieve its ambitions.