How much nature is left? Interview with Nature Data Lab’s Karl Burkart

Karl Burkart of the Nature Data Lab describes a new platform, Global Safety Net v3, built to track how much of the world's land remains ecologically intact and whether countries' protected-area claims under the 2022 global 30x30 biodiversity pledge actually target the right land.

The tool has evolved through three versions, moving from 1-kilometer to 90-meter resolution by combining satellite ecology data with The Nature Conservancy's human-modification history, which can detect land that looks wild from above but has already been converted to roads, mining, or farmland underneath.

Burkart says earlier versions found that more than half of some regions' rare-species habitat had already been converted to human use despite looking pristine on satellite imagery, a gap the new resolution is meant to close.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.