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Just 28% of countries have met a UN call to submit new plans on addressing nature loss – a year after the original deadline, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Several of the world’s most biodiverse countries – including Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa – are among those that have not yet released their nature plans.
Countries were asked to submit their pledges, known as national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs), by the start of the COP16 biodiversity summit in Colombia on 21 October 2024.
After only 15% of nations met the original deadline, countries agreed at the summit to a new text that “urges” countries to release their NBSAPs “as soon as possible”.
Many developing countries have expressed that a lack of available funding has prevented them from publishing their NBSAPs.
A spokesperson for the Global Environment Facility (Gef), the multilateral fund that provides funding to help with the preparation of NBSAPs, tells Carbon Brief that 120 out of 139 countries that have requested financial support since COP16 have been able to access it.
The spokesperson adds that the UN Environment Programme is “working to resolve outstanding issues” to allow the remaining 19 countries to access financial assistance.
Lack of action
In 2022, nations signed a landmark agreement called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which aims to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. It is often described as the “Paris Agreement for nature”.
As part of the agreement, countries agreed to submit new NBSAPs “by” COP16, which began on 21 October 2024 in Cali, Colombia. (Countries failed to find agreement on some key issues in Colombia and met again in Rome, Italy, in February 2025 for a resumed session of COP16.)
NBSAPs are blueprints for how individual countries plan to tackle biodiversity loss and ensure they meet the targets outlined in the GBF.
They are similar to nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the plans that outline how individual countries envisage meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. However, a key difference is that countries are legally obliged to submit NDCs, but not NBSAPs.
The publishing of new NBSAPs was meant to ensure that countries actually implement the targets of the GBF within their borders.
A lack of implementation was widely cited as one of the major factors behind the failure of the last set of global biodiversity rules, the Aichi targets, which were agreed in 2010.
A joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that 85% of countries missed the UN deadline to submit their NBSAPs by COP16.
At COP16, many countries lamented the lack of NBSAP submissions. At the summit, they agreed to a new text that notes the lack of action and “urges” countries to release their NBSAPs “as soon as possible”.
Now, new Carbon Brief analysis reveals that just 28% of nations (55 of 196 parties) have released their NBSAPs – a year after the deadline.
The map below shows countries that submitted their plans to the UN by the 21 October 2024 deadline (light green) and after the deadline (dark green).
Since the original deadline, both Germany and the UK have submitted their NBSAPs. This means that the US, which is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, is now the only G7 nation without a nature plan.
Eight of the “megadiverse countries” – 17 nations that together provide a home to 70% of the world’s biodiversity – are yet to produce their NBSAPs.
This includes Brazil, the world’s most biodiverse nation and host of the upcoming COP30 climate summit.
The other megadiverse countries that have not yet submitted their NBSAPs are the DRC, Ecuador, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Africa and the US.
The host of next year’s COP17 biodiversity summit, Armenia, is also among those yet to produce an NBSAP.
According to the GBF and its underlying documents, countries that were “not in a position” to meet the deadline to submit NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were requested to instead submit national targets.
These submissions simply list biodiversity targets that countries will aim for, without an accompanying plan for how they will be achieved.
By the end of the COP16, some 119 parties had produced at least one national target. A year later, this figure has risen to 141, or 72% of countries.
Finance flows
At COP16 in 2024, many developing nations said that a lack of timely funding available from the Gef had prevented them from being able to produce new NBSAPs.
In acknowledgement of this, the NBSAPs text agreed at the summit “requests” the Gef to “provide timely support to all eligible parties, aligned with national circumstances and needs, upon request, to enable them” to release their plans.
A spokesperson for the Gef tells Carbon Brief that 120 out of 139 countries that requested financial support have been able to access it, saying:
“Since 2022, the Gef has approved $123.2m in two tranches to support 139 eligible countries through implementing agencies with their NBSAPs updates or revisions. The 138 countries that requested it had access to a first tranche of support of $44.7m.
“Since October 2024, the second tranche of support has been disbursed by UNDP and UNEP to 120 out of the 139 countries that requested it. UNEP is working to resolve outstanding issues and expedite pending disbursements of the second tranche of support for the remaining 19 countries.”
Panama to Yerevan
Country representatives are currently gathered in Panama City, Panama, for preparatory talks for the next UN biodiversity summit, COP17, which will take place in Yerevan, Armenia, over 19-30 October in 2026.
At COP17, the first global review of nations’ progress to achieving the goals of the GBF is set to take place.
This review will draw from the available NBSAPs, as well as national targets and separate national reports, which are due to be submitted by February 2026.
There is little evidence to suggest that the world is on track to meet the GBF’s mission to halt and reverse biodiversity loss in just five years.
For example, an investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian published this year revealed that more than half of nations that have submitted NBSAPs do not commit to the GBF’s flagship target of protecting 30% of land and seas for nature by 2030.
The post Analysis: Just 28% of countries have released nature pledges a year after UN deadline appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Just 28% of countries have released nature pledges a year after UN deadline
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions rise
Total global CO2 emissions, which combines fossil fuels and land-use change, are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026, up from 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
The increase in 2026 comes entirely from a projected rise in land-use emissions, which are more challenging to estimate than fossil emissions.
(The global carbon budget groups emissions from fossil fuels and cement production as “fossil emissions”. Carbon Brief follows this convention throughout this piece.)
If land-use emissions had stayed at 2025 levels, total emissions would have fallen slightly in 2026 to around 42.6GtCO2.
Each edition of the global carbon budget updates the historical record as new data and methods become available. The chart below shows total emissions in this year’s budget compared with the five previous editions.
This year’s estimates of historical fossil emissions are around 0.3GtCO2 per year higher than in last year’s budget.
This is largely because the report now estimates a smaller “cement carbonation” sink in the wake of research published this year in Communications Sustainability. In other words, it estimates that cement is able to slowly reabsorb less CO2 over its lifetime than previously thought.
Estimates of land-use emissions have also been revised, including a spike in 2018 – visible in the chart above – linked to updated cropland data for Colombia.
The updated numbers show that total emissions have grown by 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over 2006-15.
Fossil emissions grew about 0.9% per year in the past decade, compared with 1.9% the decade before. Over the same period, land-use emissions have declined.
While the slowdown reflects real progress, a plateau in emissions is still a long way from the rapid declines needed to reach net-zero emissions and stabilise global temperatures.
With human-caused warming reaching 1.37C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) i