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While much research has focused on the striking differences in biodiversity between tropical and temperate regions, another, equally dramatic, pattern has gone largely unstudied: the differences in species richness among Earth's three major habitat types—land, oceans and freshwater.

At the upcoming CBD, countries are expected to reach an agreement to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans and land by 2030. But which land is protected, as part of this agreement, matters immensely.

There’s a big caveat to go along with this news, though. These protected spaces are not distributed evenly across the globe, still falling well below 17 percent in over half of the world's countries, a study from the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) says.