Implementing the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Targets.
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2026-01
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The Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Targets present the most ambitious and serious conservation agenda ever developed-the overarching goal of preserving 30% of the planet by 2030. An organizational framework is now in place to deliver stable, predictive, and adaptive actions to monitor and measure the Earth's biodiversity, assess ecological and evolutionary changes, identify key drivers of those changes, and, at the core, apply effective scientific, financial, and governmental treatments to halt biodiversity decline for a sustainable future. Is this implementable? We summarize the essence of the Targets to raise key questions about their execution. We show that the reports of large conservation organizations connect to these Targets only infrequently. Yet, there is abundant evidence to measure the successes and failures of the conservation enterprise. Generally, global financial commitments are substantial and increasing. We specify improvements and continual reassessments toward protected areas, developing countries, and indigenous communities. To achieve success, we recommend actionable plans to improve implementation leading up to and following the next CBD-COP meetings.
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Gittleman, John L, Stuart L Pimm, Berndt J Van Rensburg, Kyle S Van Houtan and Callum M Roberts (2026). Implementing the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Targets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 123(2). p. e2514761123. 10.1073/pnas.2514761123 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/35596.
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Stuart L. Pimm
Stuart Pimm is a world leader in the study of present-day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. His research covers the reasons why species become extinct, how fast they do so, the global patterns of habitat loss and species extinction and, importantly, the management consequences of this research. Pimm received his BSc degree from Oxford University in 1971 and his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University in 1974. Pimm is the author of over 350 scientific papers and five books. He is one of the most highly cited environmental scientists. Pimm wrote the highly acclaimed assessment of the human impact to the planet: The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth in 2001. His commitment to the interface between science and policy has led to his testimony to both House and Senate Committees on the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. He was worked and taught in Africa for nearly 30 years on elephants, most recently lions — through National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative — but always on topics that relate to the conservation of wildlife and the ecosystems on which they depend. Other research areas include the Everglades of Florida and tropical forests in South America, especially the Atlantic Coast forest of Brazil and the northern Andes — two of the world's "hotspots" for threatened species. His international honours include the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2010), the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Society for Conservation Biology’s Edward T. LaRoe III Memorial Award (2006), and the Marsh Award for Conservation Biology, from the Marsh Christian Trust (awarded by the Zoological Society of London in 2004). Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, awarded him the William Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement in 2007. In 2019, he won the International Cosmos Prize, which recognised his founding and directing Saving Nature, www.savingnature.org, a non-profit that uses donations for carbon emissions offsets to fund local conservation groups in areas of exceptional tropical biodiversity to restore their degraded lands.
Kyle Van Houtan
I am a conservation biologist and teacher-scholar whose independent, externally funded research shows how global change reshapes populations, communities, and ecosystems. My research focuses on indicator species—birds, turtles, otters, sharks, corals, kelps—as ecological sentinels of climate and other human pressures. I integrate field monitoring, experiments, biochemical forensics, biotelemetry, and machine learning to connect organismal biology to ecosystem change. I am the founder and director of two research laboratories, and I actively mentor students and build research programs to train the next generation of conservation scientists.
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