On 21 October 2026, the Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Bern co-hosted a side event at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia. Together with Kenya's Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry and Madagascar's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, we explored how Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) can help deliver the global target of conserving 30% of land, freshwater and ocean areas by 2030.

The discussion showed that the conversation on 30x30 is moving from setting goals to delivering them. Communities are already managing land in ways that contribute to conservation, often more than global reporting captures. Making OECMs work requires putting governance and equity at the center, recognizing land rights, building trust with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and making sure finance reaches local actors. Kenya's conservancies and Madagascar's emerging national framework offered concrete examples of how this can happen in practice.

We warmly thank moderator Richard Kiaka, our researcher Van Hai Nguyen, keynote speaker Jan Peter Schemmel (Campaign for Nature), Daniel Marnewick (IUCN), Mayiani Saino (State Department for Environment and Climate Change, Kenya) and Sahoby Ivy Randriamahaleo (Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Madagascar). A special thank you goes to our colleague Carla Koch for making this event possible.