Harry D. Jonas ^1* Heather Bingham ² Nathan Bennett ^1,3,4 Stephen Woodley ⁵ Ryan Zlatanova ¹ Emily Howland ² Elise Belle ² Jasmin Upton ² Bex Gottlieb ² Vignesh Kamath ² Janeth Lessmann ² Giacomo Delli ⁶ Gregoire Dubois ⁷ Gabby Ahmadia ¹ Joachim Claudet ⁸ Carly Cook ⁹ Johana Deza ¹ Kirsten Grorud-Colvert ¹⁰ Georgina Gurney ¹¹ Christopher J. Lemieux ¹² Lucia Ruiz ¹

• ¹ World Wildlife Fund (United States), Washington D.C., United States
• ² United Nations Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), Cambridge, United Kingdom
• ³ International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Switzerland
• ⁴ Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, Faculty of Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• ⁵ World Commission on Protected Areas, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Chelsea, Canada
• ⁶ Arcadia Sistemi Informativi Territoriali SRL, Milano, Italy
• ⁷ European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Lombardia, Italy
• ⁸ Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Paris, Ile-de-France, France
• ⁹ School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
• ¹⁰ Department of Integrative Biology, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States
• ¹¹ College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
• ¹² Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) are sites outside of protected areas that deliver the effective, long-term conservation of biodiversity. Both protected areas and OECMs contribute to the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Target 3, which calls for the conservation of 30% of marine, terrestrial and inland water areas by 2030. This paper provides the first global assessment of the contribution of OECMs to GBF Target 3. Between 2019 and 2023, 820 sites in nine countries and territories were reported to the World Database on OECMs, covering 1.9 million km2 of the Earth’s surface and, in the terrestrial realm, contributing over 1% to the 30% coverage target. Notably, over 50% of reported OECMs are under governance by governments and less than 2% are governed by Indigenous peoples and local communities. In countries and territories that have reported OECMs, a far greater proportion of OECMs than protected areas are under shared governance (40.9% compared to 2.5%), and collaborative governance is the most common governance sub-type among reported OECMs. This paper finds that almost 30% of the 820 reported OECMs overlap with identified Key Biodiversity Areas, which are one global classification of areas of particular importance for biodiversity. With Target 3’s pressing deadline of 2030, there is an urgent need to scale up understanding and local to national engagement with the OECM framework, ensuring that it fulfills its potential to recognize diverse forms of equitable governance and effective conservation.