Overview
The EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is a comprehensive, ambitious and long-term plan to protect nature and reverse the degradation of ecosystems. It is a key component of the European Green Deal.
The strategy aims to put Europe's biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030, and contains specific actions and commitments.
It is the basis for the EU’s position in international negotiations and it's participation in the Convention on Global Biodiversity.
Objectives
The Biodiversity Strategy aims to put Europe’s biodiversity on the road to rejuvenation by 2030 for the benefit of people, climate and the planet.
The strategy aims to build our societies’ resilience to future threats, such as:
- The impacts of climate change
- Forest fires
- Food insecurity
- Disease outbreaks - including by protecting wildlife and fighting illegal wildlife trade
Actions
The strategy contains specific commitments and actions to be delivered by 2030, including:
- Establishing a larger EU-wide network of protected areas on land and at sea, enlarging existing Natura 2000 areas, with strict protection for areas of very high biodiversity and climate value.
- The launch of the EU's first-ever Nature Restoration Regulation, which includes an overarching restoration objective for the long-term recovery of nature in the EU’s land and sea areas, with binding restoration targets for specific habitats and species.
- Introducing measures to enable the necessary transformative change, by ensuring better implementation and tracking progress, improving knowledge, financing and investment, and better respecting nature in decision-making.
- Introducing measures to tackle the global biodiversity challenge, which includes the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, signed in 2022 by 196 countries.
See our nature and biodiversity page for related policies.
Watch the video below to see former Environment Commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, speak on the EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy and Europe's green recovery.
Implementation
Two online tools track progress in implementing the strategy:
- An online actions tracker provides up-to-date information on the state of implementation of the strategy’s many actions.
- A targets dashboard shows progress to the quantified biodiversity targets set by the Strategy, at an EU level and in Member States.
- 1 September 2026National Restoration Plans deadline for Member States
- 18 August 2024Nature Restoration Regulation officially enters into force
- 17 June 2024European Council adopts Nature Restoration Regulation
- 21 November 2023Commission adopts proposal for Regulation establishing EU forest monitoring framework
- March 2023Commission publishes two sets of guidelines on forests
- 19 December 2022196 countries adopt historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
- 23 October 2020European Council adopts conclusions on EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
- 18 September 2020European Economic and Social Committee adopts opinion on EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
- 20 May 2020Publication of EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
- Communication: EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and Annex
- Advocacy Toolkit for Nature in EU languages + Arabic
- Questions and Answers: EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
- EU Biodiversity Strategy - publication
- Barrier removal for river restoration - guidance document
- Criteria and guidance for protected areas designations - guidance document
- Bringing nature back into our lives – EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy
- Economic impact of biodiversity
- From farm to fork: Our food, our health, our planet, our future
- EU Green Deal: Benefits for farmers
- How the future CAP will contribute to the EU Green Deal
- EU Biodiversity strategy info sheet
Contact
For questions about EU environmental policy, please contact Europe Direct.
