- Formal negotiations
- Finance
- Global review
- Global report
- Digital sequence information
- Harmful subsidies
- Marine biodiversity
- Planning, monitoring, reporting and review
- Article 8(j) implementation
- Biodiversity and climate change
- Links with other bodies
- Around the COP
- Armenian presidency
- Protests
- Lobbying and influence
- Carbon and biodiversity markets
Ronny P Sasmita is a senior analyst at Indonesia Strategic and Economics Action Institution, a think-tank specialising in geopolitical and geoeconomic studies in Indonesia.
The devastation that has swept across Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra in recent weeks has forced Indonesia to confront an uncomfortable truth. What unfolded was not only a natural disaster but a collision between an exceptional climatic cycle and a landscape steadily stripped of its natural defenses.
More than 600 people have now been confirmed dead in the country, more than four hundred remain missing, and entire communities have been torn apart by the force of water, mud, and debris that surged with little warning. The scenes have become tragically familiar, houses swallowed by landslides, rivers breaking their banks, villages buried under mud that once clung to forest roots no longer there.
This year’s climate pattern created the perfect storm. Meteorological agencies warned that an active monsoon phase combined with warm ocean temperatures would push rainfall to exceptional levels across western Indonesia.
With no COP30 roadmap, hopes of saving forests hinge on voluntary initiatives
A rare tropical storm then formed in the Malacca Strait, unleashing torrential rains and wind gusts for several days. The Malacca Strait is one of the least likely places on Earth for tropical cyclones to form, making this event an exceptional anomaly. What might have once been manageable seasonal extremes became lethal when these torrents met degraded catchments and eroded hillsides.
Heavy rain alone does not create walls of mud and logs crashing into villages, it is heavy rain falling on land that is no longer able to hold or absorb it. In many affected districts, people reported water arriving faster and more violently than anyone could remember, carrying with it an astonishing volume of uprooted trees and logs that locals insist did not come from natural forest fall alone.
Conveyor belts of timber
This is where public suspicion has grown. The floods across the three provinces did not just bring water, they brought evidence. Viral videos showed rivers transformed into conveyor belts of timber, beaches covered with logs, and bridges jammed with uprooted trunks.
Environmental groups quickly pointed to long standing problems of deforestation and illegal logging that weaken watersheds and destabilize slopes. Some officials at the local level echoed these concerns, noting that the amount of cut wood carried by the floods appeared far beyond what would be expected from natural tree fall.
While the national government has cautioned against drawing conclusions too quickly, insisting that investigations into the origins of the timber are underway, the visual evidence has only deepened public frustration. Communities living downstream know what an intact forest looks and behaves like during heavy rain, and they know what a damaged one unleashes.
Legal concessions worsen problem
Recent data reinforces the scale of the problem. Independent monitoring groups reported that Indonesia lost more than two hundred sixty thousand hectares of forest in 2024, with over ninety thousand hectares lost on the island of Sumatra alone. This level of annual loss places Indonesia among the world’s highest tropical deforestation hotspots. Although much of this deforestation occurred inside legal concessions, the ecological impact is no less severe.
When natural forest is cleared, whether for plantations, industry, or illicit timber extraction, the soil becomes exposed, drainage shifts, and slopes lose integrity. Even more troubling, authorities uncovered a major illegal logging operation in the Mentawai Islands in late 2025, seizing more than four thousand cubic meters of illicit timber. This suggests that illegal extraction remains alive in areas where oversight is weak and access is difficult.
Comment: Europe must defend its deforestation law – for forests, business and its reputation
Such practices hollow out forest structure in ways that are not always visible until disaster strikes. Government policy has played an ambiguous role in this trajectory. On one hand, Indonesia has made international commitments to curb deforestation and has deployed satellite based early warning systems to identify suspicious land clearing.
On the other hand, the expansion of legal concessions for agriculture, timber, and mining has allowed vast tracts of natural forest to be converted. Even when legal, these transitions often degrade watersheds and reduce the natural capacity of landscapes to regulate water.
Local governments, strapped for revenue and political support, frequently view concessions as economic lifelines, while enforcement against illegal operators remains uneven. The result is a patchwork of legal and illegal pressures that steadily erode ecological resilience.
Protecting forests is a safety issue
The tragedy in Sumatra marks a warning that can no longer be ignored. Climate variability is intensifying, rainfall extremes are becoming more frequent, and the combination of strong storms and weakened landscapes will make disasters deadlier if current trends continue.
Indonesia cannot control the monsoon, but it can control the health of its forests. Protecting the remaining natural forest in Sumatra is no longer simply an environmental issue, it has become a matter of public safety and national stability.
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Looking forward, the government must take a sharper turn. Enforcement against illegal logging must be strengthened through transparent monitoring and community based surveillance in remote areas. The issuance of new concessions in sensitive watersheds should be paused while existing ones undergo ecological audits.
Local governments in Sumatra need sustained funding for reforestation and slope stabilization projects, not one off emergency responses. Finally, national and provincial authorities must collaborate to restore degraded catchments before the next extreme rainfall arrives.
Sumatra has paid an unbearable price for years of ecological neglect combined with a climate growing more volatile. The next disaster is a question of when, not if. Whether it becomes another national tragedy or a turning point will depend on how seriously Indonesia treats the forests that remain standing and the people living beneath them.
The post How Sumatra’s lost trees turned extreme rain into catastrophe appeared first on Climate Home News.
How Sumatra’s lost trees turned extreme rain into catastrophe
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Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.
The text states that other countries – including emerging economies – may “voluntarily assume” these obligations to pay. However, it adds that this list of developed countries “shall” be reviewed periodically and amended “if necessary”.
The list was last amended in 2006.
(See this “jargon buster” which explains the specific meaning and legal weight of various terms and verbs used in UN formal documents.)
Discussions around this fraught subject had reached a dead end at intersessional talks this year, but resurfaced in Yerevan.
The first “non-paper” had four different options for expanding the contributor base. These ranged from using the World Bank’s country income groups “as a proxy” to identify high-income countries, to commissioning a study on the impacts of being included on the list.
By 21 October, the number of options swelled to eight, including two from Saudi Arabia and one from Peru.
Some countries “expressed concern” that certain options were based on a CBD secretariat study on “what constitutes a developed country”, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.
By the end of the first week, it was clear that the finance deadlock would have to go into informal ministerial consultations for any consensus to emerge.
At a press conference on 28 October, Christopher O’Sullivan, Ireland’s nature minister and representing the EU delegation, told Carbon Brief:
“Our position isn’t that we want to pull back in terms of contributing…but it’s been 20 years since that list was added to, times have changed and there are new realities. We just simply want those new realities reflected. I don’t fully understand why there’s so much opposition to that.”
The EU chose not to comment on which countries it would like to see on that list.
Lim Li Ching from the Third World Network, meanwhile, called the push for others to “assume the obligations” of developed countries “sheer hypocrisy”, adding that any country could make a voluntary contribution. She told Carbon Brief:
“At a forum like the CBD, this linking of income status with finance does not take into account where historical and current responsibilities lie. If you want to generate more funding for biodiversity, let’s look at sovereign debt burdens and rules, which are inequitable for developing countries. But if you can fund wars, and provide resources for your defence industry, then you know where the priorities are.”
On 29 October – at a plenary meant to adopt final texts for the most contentious subjects – Norway’s Gaute Hanssen announced that resource-mobilisation discussions would go into a smaller “friends of the chair” meeting.
Facilitated by Carolina Caceres from Canada and Imèn Meliane from Tunisia, the meeting would discuss the most contentious elements of a draft decision that had swelled to 112 brackets, denoting areas of disagreement on specific details in the text.
While the meeting was open to all, countries that were called to be present included Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the EU, Fiji, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UK.
At the same time, a “non-paper” text by finance and environment ministers laid out countries’ red lines and compromises.
At the end of COP17, countries welcomed a final compromise text, with Kenya thanking the “strong women” co-chairs who strove to strike a “delicate” balance.
China, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Fiji cautioned against any further interventions, with Brazil warning: “If we open this text, we will never close it again.”
While the final decision “recognises” that “contributions from more parties would improve the mobilisation” of biodiversity finance, it steered away from issuing criteria to expand the list of donor countries.
The text makes it clear that no additions to the list would be made without inviting and confidentially consulting with interested countries, to secure their explicit consent.
Instead, the CBD secretariat “invites” countries keen to be on the list and “assume the obligations” of developed countries to “signal interest” before COP18 and at every alternate COP thereafter.
At the same time, developing countries can contribute to meeting the GBF and biodiversity convention’s goals on a “voluntary basis”, with contributions not implying inclusion on the list.
A negotiator for China told Carbon Brief at the closing plenary:
“We welcome this balanced document. It was a very long discussion that has gone [on] since [2022 nature talks in] Nairobi. But actually this time, there were a lot of sensitive issues, [there were] a lot of critical things we didn’t open in the contact groups; it mainly went to the high-level discussion.”
The decision also establishes a financial mechanism for nature funding after 2030 under the governance of the COP, a key ask from developing countries.
However, it defers decisions on what form this mechanism would take – whether this would be a new fund or based on existing arrangements – until COP18.
Oscar Soria at the Common Initiative told Carbon Brief that the decision on the financial mechanism leaves things “very open”, with “no movement” towards a new fund or money and no upgrades to existing funding arrangements.
The text acknowledges the links between debt and biodiversity eight times, mentioning how debt-related instruments can be included in biodiversity plans, but does not go further.
“It is almost as if the debt studies they called for at COP16 didn’t happen,” said Soria, who had earlier flagged serious methodological issues with the first-ever COP-commissioned report on debt and biodiversity.
Global review
In Yerevan, countries agreed on the first stocktake of progress towards the 2030 nature targets – known as the “global review”.
The review was one of the keenly anticipated outcomes from COP17 and was seen as less controversial than some of the other major negotiation strands.
It was swiftly signed off by countries at the start of the final COP17 plenary, with just one last-minute addition.
The concept of carrying out a global review on “collective progress” was set out in the GBF and its underlying documents.
The details of how this review would be carried out were supposed to be agreed at COP16, but it was not discussed before the plenary in Cali was suspended for loss of “quorum”. It was instead adopted at the resumed COP16 negotiations in Rome in February 2025.
The global review was based largely on the findings of the global report and other information provided by countries.
The final text “welcomes” and also “notes with deep concern” the findings of the global report. It then homes in on various ways countries can increase their biodiversity action to get on track to meet the targets.
As of 19 October, when COP17 officially began, the non-paper contained 152 brackets, which indicate areas of disagreement in UN texts.
Smaller “contact group” discussions took place to try and reduce the number of brackets throughout the first week. This group was co-chaired by Sanne Kruid from the Netherlands and Sivendra Michael from Fiji.
A few days into the talks, Kruid told Carbon Brief that the progress on the global review was “relatively positive”, with countries “engaging quite well”.
One contentious section of the 11-page text was paragraph 15, which “urges” countries to accelerate implementation of nature targets, “including by in