Setting aside an additional 1.2% of the world’s land as nature preserves would prevent the majority of predicted plant and animal extinctions and cost about $263 billion, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The world is racing to meet a goal to protect 30% of the world by 2030 to protect wildlife that is being decimated by climate change, pollution and habitat destruction.

Global policymakers will meet at a United Nations summit in Colombia in October to discuss plans for reaching that goal.

The study in the journal Frontiers in Science aimed to identify the highest value areas in hope that they be included in those protection plans, said Carlos Peres, a study co-author and conservation ecology expert at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

“Most countries do not actually have a strategy,” Peres said.

“The 30-by-30 targets still lack a lot of details because it doesn’t actually say what 30 percent should be protected.”

The study’s proposed protections would cover an additional 1.6 million square km (633,000 square miles) – an area about a fifth the size of the United States – across 16,825 sites globally that are home to rare and threatened species.

That’s on top of the nearly 16% of the world that already have some level of protection.

The study estimated the $263 billion bill is how much it would cost to acquire the new areas, many of which include private property, at current value over the next five years.

“Time is not on our side because it will become increasingly more expensive and more difficult to set aside additional protected areas,” Peres said.

Land acquisition makes up most of the cost of creating protected areas, and the study did not consider the upkeep costs for policing the reserves.

About three-quarters of the sites are tropical forests, as those are the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems. The Phillipines, Brazil and Indonesia are home to more than half of the high-value sites.

Russia is the single country with the most high-valued area ripe for conservation with 138,436 square km identified in the study, an area the size of Greece.

Several African countries also topped the list with Madagascar having the fourth-highest number of sites overall while the Democratic Republic of Congo had the largest area targeted for conservation on the continent.

The United States is the only developed nation among the top 30 countries in the analysis, with 0.6% of the sites or an area twice the size of Delaware.

The researchers only considered land and freshwater ecosystems but not oceans or marine protected areas. Researchers did not include invertebrates in the study, as the geographical distributions insects and other such animals are not well mapped.

Kuwait has announced temporary power cuts in some parts of the country during peak consumption hours, saying it is struggling to meet increased demand spurred by extreme summer heat.

In a statement on Wednesday, Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said the scheduled cuts would occur for up to two hours a day, in the first such step for the OPEC member state as climate change causes temperatures to rise, AFP reported.

It blamed the cuts on “the inability of power plants to meet increased demand” during peak hours amid “a rise in temperatures compared to the same period in previous years.”

On Thursday, the ministry published a schedule of expected cuts across several parts of the country, after urging residents to ration consumption to ease the load on power plants.

Kuwait, one of the largest crude producers in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), is considered one of the world’s hottest desert countries.

In recent years, climate change has made summer peaks hotter and longer.

The extreme heat raises reliance on energy-guzzling air conditioners which are ubiquitous in Kuwait during the summer months.

Temperatures neared 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday, according to Kuwait’s Meteorological Department.

“What we are experiencing today is the result of climate change,” said Kuwaiti astronomer and scientist Adel Al-Saadoun, noting that temperatures are expected to climb above the 50 degree Celsius mark in the coming days.

Last month, Kuwait signed short-term contracts to buy 500 megawatts of electricity, including 300 MW from Oman and 200 MW from Qatar, during the summer months. The contracts would last from June 1 to August 31.

Kamel Harami, a Kuwaiti energy expert, said that the Gulf state needed to revamp its energy infrastructure.

“The available energy is not sufficient, and instead of relying on oil and gas, we must go towards nuclear, solar and wind energy,” he told AFP.

“This is only the beginning of the crisis, and the programmed cuts of electricity will continue in the coming years if we do not accelerate the construction of power stations.”

Umm Mohammed, a Kuwaiti woman in her sixties, said she was left without power for two hours on Wednesday.

“We weren’t severely affected,” she told AFP, noting that the house remained cool during the brief outage.

“Some turn their homes into refrigerators, even when they are not inside, and this raises the load” on power plants, she said.

China’s National Meteorological Centre on Sunday issued an alert for high temperatures as multiple regions across the country experience sweltering heat, while many southern provinces issued severe flood warnings due to heavy rains.

The intensity of high temperatures is expected to decrease in north China and regions between the Yellow River and the Huaihe River, the centre said, Reuters reported.

The centre forecast maximum temperatures of 37-39 degrees Celsius (99-102 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Henan on Sunday.

Heavy rains have lashed southeastern Fujian province for seven days and are expected to continue, with water levels in some rivers exceeding warning levels. Authorities have released water from several reservoirs, China’s state television CCTV reported.

Authorities in Guangxi region said water levels of some local rivers had “skyrocketed” and that a student was killed in the floods in the southern city of Guilin, CCTV reported.