Climate scientists agree that protecting and conserving 30-percent is the absolute minimum needed to slow down the alarming loss of biodiversity. Sounds like a movement everyone can get behind. And yet…nearly 50 foundations and indigenous rights activists sent a joint letter to the plan’s drafters at the UN, saying that the 30x30 focus on creating new protected lands would, as they write, “lead to human rights abuses across the globe,” with millions evicted from their ancestral lands  Critics say 30x30 is more of the same, fortress conservation, separating nature from people.That’s the debate between Western and African-led conservation models. What is the role of people? Do you protect nature by walling it off from people, or do you put people at the center?This season we’re looking at African-led conservation. You could call it a “new” model of conservation, but its roots are in Africa’s traditional ways of conserving nature. African-led conservation takes a holistic approach, connecting the dots between conservation, climate change and economic development. Above all, it has Africans leading the charge.In this episode, we’ll look at the linchpin of this model: people.

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