Shifting the conservation Overton window

The recent adoption of the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 2022) calls for the conservation of 30% of the planet by the year 2030. This goal, referred to as 30 × 30, would require nearly doubling the terrestrial area and quadrupling the marine area now considered protected. However, there is no mention in the 21 GBF targets to achieve protected areas of a certain size or level of protection, leading to concerns that practitioners might try to meet this goal by designating for inclusion areas that have little or no protection or that are small protected areas within a matrix of intensive human development—a global trend over the past 50 years (Lindsay & Malcolm, 2022). Failure to specify targets for protected area size and level of protection within the GBF and other national 30 × 30 policies is intended to allow parties flexibility in how they reach their target. For example, in the America the Beautiful Report (DOI, 2021), which outlines U.S. 30 × 30 policy, there is specific language to deemphasize large government-managed protected areas and direct funding primarily toward small-scale conservation efforts on private lands (NFWF, 2022). Although such efforts are important and practical in a world of increasing human development (Kennedy et al., 2019), we argue that establishment of large, protected areas is still possible and critically important. Past evidence suggests that without 30 × 30 policies emphasizing the need for new, large protected areas, there is likely to be an acceleration of shifting baseline syndrome, whereby tolerance for smaller and degraded protected areas will increase over time (Soga & Gaston, 2018). The Overton window concept was coined by policy analyst Joseph Overton (Lehman, 2010) to characterize the range of acceptable policies at a given time. The concept implies that introduction of ideas outside the current mainstream on a controversial topic provides political space for initiatives that are less bold to become mainstream. We propose that policy that explicitly calls for establishment of large protected areas under the 30 × 30 initiative can shift the conservation Overton window. One example of this concept in practice is the 345-km2 Katahdin Woods and Waters National (KWWN) Monument in the United States created in 2016. In the 1990s, a wealthy individual purchased land around the core area of Baxter State Park toward the goal of creating a larger Maine Woods National Park. This led to controversy with local residents and the forest industry. It also provided the opportunity for more moderate conservation groups to offer creative financial mechanisms for conservation easements on industrial land, resulting in numerous private tracts gaining conservation status (Clark & Howell, 2007). Facilitated by a concomitant decline in the forest products industry, the region shifted over 20 years to a conservation economy. These changes ultimately resulted in creation of the KWWN. Contributors to local editorial pages who opposed the original park proposal now celebrate the economic growth stimulated by the KWWN. Another example is the 1.9-million-km2 Cook Islands Marine Park (also termed Marae Moana) created in 2017. The origin can be traced to the ambitions of a former professional rugby player and Cook Islands Tourism Board member who wanted to create the world's largest marine protected area as a way to distinguish the Cook Islands from other ecotourism destinations (Durbin, 2018). Although met with initial resistance given perceived threats to local communities and fisheries, the concept gave rise to extensive stakeholder engagement and spatial planning. This resulted in the designation of multiuse zones that ultimately garnered intense public support for the marine park as a way for Cook Islanders to show “ownership” of marine resources within their exclusive economic zone (Durbin, 2018). Similar examples of creation of modern-day, large protected areas occur on every continent—from the recently created 66,000-km2 Birriliburu Indigenous Protected Area in Australia to the 4000-km2 Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique and the 2577-km2 Selvagens Islands Marine Reserve in Portugal. Examples of big ideas transforming conservation discourse also can be found in efforts to create protected corridors and networks. Ongoing efforts to establish the Brazil Marine Protected Area Network, the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Conservation Initiative in North America, SokNot landscape in Kenya and Tanzania, and Kanha Pench corridors in central India all serve as overarching large-scale initiatives that drive localized action to connect landscapes (Oppler et al., 2021). These examples show that setting large protected areas as strategic conservation targets can have significant cascading benefits by shifting the current conservation Overton window across systems, cultures, countries, and political structures with different levels of financial support. This is not a call to abandon efforts to create small protected areas. Rather, we argue that shifting of the conservation Overton window by targeting large protected areas can facilitate achieving conservation at all spatial scales by creating political space for compromise and less ambitious conservation initiatives to become mainstream. The important point is that practitioners should be thinking bigger than what might be easily achieved or deemed practical currently because that resets the conservation Overton window from which negotiations are made. However, such successes must start with a clearly articulated vision and specific policy targets for creation of large protected areas that currently do not exist.

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