Policy innovation through local, sustainable development evaluation

The global political agenda has included some high-profile environmental summits over the past few months. Three of these events stand out. The 2022 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, was held from 6–20 November 2022. This was followed from 7–19 December 2022 by the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montréal, Canada, and the UN-Water Summit at UN Headquarters in New York City from 22–24 March 2023. Of these three events, the Biodiversity Summit made the most impact as delegates committed to protecting 30% of land and 30% of coastal and marine areas by 2030. This pledge is remarkable because it re-establishes political commitments to protect biodiversity, which is a key component of climate action. At the same time, many observers of the summit questioned how nation-states will implement this goal. Like the SDGs, the “30 by 30” commitment is long on aspirations but short on operationalization details. This observation is not a criticism of the agreement per se but a recognition of the challenges preventing ambitious biodiversity conservation plans from being fully implemented.