“The challenge before us is no longer one of ambition. It is one of delivery.” That was IUCN Director General Dr. Grethel Aguilar, speaking to the plenary at COP17 in Yerevan, and the two weeks of talks that ended on Saturday did little to prove her wrong.
Negotiators closed the conference with agreement on its main decisions, including the Yerevan Pathway, a plan to speed up global biodiversity action. For communities across Asia and beyond, the question is whether it changes anything on the ground.
A review with a blunt message
The conference’s main job was the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which sets 23 targets for 2030. The verdict was plain. Progress is real but slow, and the world is not on track to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Without a rapid acceleration, governments were told, the framework’s 2030 targets and mission will not be met, and its goals for 2050 are at risk.
Aguilar pinned part of the blame on money. Conservation remains underfunded, she said, while harmful incentives keep driving biodiversity loss. Her answer: mobilise more resources from every source, redirect harmful subsidies and align financial flows with nature.
What the Yerevan Pathway does
The pathway sets no new targets. It is about how countries can work harder to meet the ones already agreed. Its priorities through 2030 include faster implementation, wider coverage of national targets and stronger financial and other support. Negotiators also adopted decisions on protected areas, forest biodiversity, sustainable wildlife management and invasive alien species.
Not everything got finished. Negotiations on cooperation and strategic review, plus two items under the Nagoya Protocol, were pushed to the next ordinary meetings.
The money
The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity said nearly 2 billion U.S. dollars in new funding was announced alongside the talks. That included 560 million dollars under the ninth replenishment of the Global Environment Facility and its Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, 500 million dollars through the Species Recovery Alliance, and more than 330 million dollars through the Value Nature Fund.
Yet the global report found that developed countries missed their pledge to provide at least 20 billion dollars a year in biodiversity finance to developing countries by 2025. The shortfall was a major sore point in the negotiations. Some developed countries pushed to broaden the contributor base. Article 20 of the convention requires developed-country parties to provide new and additional financial resources, and lets other parties take on such obligations voluntarily, so the argument over who pays is an old one.
Guido Broekhoven of WWF International, speaking before the closing session, put the stakes bluntly: “Every diluted clause, every deferred target, is a step towards irreversible loss.”
On 27 October the European Commission launched the Friends of Credits for Nature and Biodiversity, an informal, government-led group meant to build support for nature credits. Commissioner Jessika Roswall said such credits make nature-positive action more visible, credible and investable. France, Peru, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain joined, along with Australia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand.
Mountains, the water towers
Armenia, as COP17 President, used the conference to launch the Yerevan Platform on Mountains and Related Freshwater Ecosystems with the UN Environment Programme. Mountains support the livelihoods of around 1.2 billion people and provide 55-60% of global annual freshwater flows. Only 19% of mountain areas are protected.
The platform will bring mountain countries together with the downstream nations that depend on their water, to work out where support and funding are most needed. Hambardzoum Matevosyan, the COP17 President, called it personal: “Our villages, our monasteries, our pastures and our history were built on slopes.” For families who drink from rivers that start in distant ranges, that is a very practical matter.
Who is missing
The United States remains the only UN member state that has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, which dates to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The earlier Aichi Biodiversity Targets failed because they lacked clarity, were hard to measure and had limited funding.
Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the convention, offered the test for the next four years: “Ultimately, the test is not what governments agreed in Yerevan, but what they change when they return home.” The next marker comes on 18 November, when the EU holds a side-event at UNFCCC COP 31.
Sources
- Convention on Biological Diversity
- Armenia, in partnership with UNEP, launches global initiative to drive action on mountain and related freshwater ecosystems
- TALKING BIODIVERSITY, LOSS AND DAMAGE, AND LAW AT THE UN BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE IN YEREVAN, ARMENIA
- EU launches Friends of Credits for Nature and Biodiversity
- IUCN Director General delivers statement at 2026 UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17)
- World Insights: Yerevan Pathway charts course for biodiversity action, but challenges remain
Photo: Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0)
