Goal 15: life on land, and what its numbers leave out

Goal 15 asks for five separate things in one sentence: protect and restore land ecosystems, manage forests sustainably, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt the loss of biodiversity. Its twelve targets then add species trafficking, invasive species and the financing behind all of it.

Twelve targets, five deadlines already passed

Nine of the twelve targets are outcomes. Five of them carried a 2020 deadline, including an end to deforestation (15.2) and preventing the extinction of threatened species (15.5). Those years have passed, and the targets remain in the framework as written. Two more, on restoring degraded land (15.3) and conserving mountain ecosystems (15.4), run to 2030.

One target is unusually direct about a crime:

Better measured than most, and narrower than it reads

Goal 15 leans on satellite imagery and on long-running conservation records, which gives it more regular reporting than most environmental goals. Only 3 of its 14 indicators lack regular data from most countries.

Those instruments capture less than the goal’s wording suggests. The forest indicator counts hectares, so a plantation of a single species and an old-growth rainforest weigh the same, and planting in one place can hide clearing in another.

The Red List Index tracks extinction risk only for groups of species that have been fully assessed, mostly vertebrates and a few groups of plants and invertebrates. Most described species have never been assessed. Most species have never been described.