A first set of biodiversity plans filed by countries to reverse nature loss are “insufficient” to meet this decade’s global targets, including a landmark goal to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030, a landmark UN report warned on Thursday.

The State of Biodiversity Action, put together by a panel of technical experts for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), was released in Yerevan, ahead of the COP17 nature talks starting on Monday in the Armenian capital.

Over the next two weeks, governments will for the first time take stock of progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed in 2022 – a set of 23 targets also known as the “Paris Agreement for nature” – and will decide on policy guidelines for ramping up ambition before the 2030 deadline. The UN report will be the main basis for these negotiations.

At a press conference in Armenia, UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted that, while there has been some progress on the GBF, the “bad news” is that less than half of country plans are on track to meet its targets.

If current commitments are met by the end of the decade, only 26% of land ecosystems and 12% of marine ecosystems will be protected – falling “real short” of the 30% target agreed in Montreal in 2022, Guterres said. “The war on nature has not yet ended,” he added.

UN Environment chief Inger Andersen said the report “sets the tone for the focus, ambition and urgent action we need to deliver” in Armenia, including by reducing subsidies that harm nature and mobilising new finance for biodiversity. “All leaders and all negotiators must respond to these findings,” she emphasised.

Andersen added that climate change amplifies threats to biodiversity, which makes protection all the more important as global warming is now almost certain to rise above a key threshold. “Exceedence of 1.5C increases the likelihood of forest diebacks, phenological shifts, warming oceans that become more inhospitable to species, irreversible tipping points and so much more,” she said.

Progress on land but ocean lags behind

The report shows that if countries meet all the biodiversity targets in their plans, this would protect about 27% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, a fivefold increase in the span of ten years.

Progress has been uneven, with most conservation efforts focused on terrestrial ecosystems. The report suggests that currently about 19% of land ecosystems are protected, up two percentage points from 2020, which UN authorities welcomed but said is not a fast enough pace.

However, the real gap is at sea, where only about 10% of the global ocean has some sort of protection. Coastal areas under national jurisdiction have done better, as currently 23% of this marine territory is protected, but the report shows most of the deep ocean is not.

Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, an advocacy group, said the new High Seas Treaty – which entered into force this year and will allow for the creation of Marine Protected Areas in the deep ocean – represents an opportunity, as only about 1.5% is under protection so far.

A group of environmental NGOs including WWF and Bloomberg Philanthropies has issued a call for governments to scale up ocean conservation and to designate $16 billion annually for marine protection measures, up from $1.8bn now.

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Some countries did not set a conservation target at all for both land and sea, the report says, blaming technical challenges like how to account for overlapping protected areas, difficulty recognising protections for private land and land-accounting methodologies changing over time.

A separate report by Campaign for Nature suggests that the 30×30 goal could still be met with “increased ambition and commitment”, and says that around 50 countries have already protected about 30% of their land.

A group of environmental NGOs has warned that, beyond the 30% headline figure, protected areas need to be “high integrity” and recognise the stewardship of local communities and Indigenous peoples.

Developing countries call for finance

Rich countries will arrive at COP17 with shrinking aid budgets and geopolitical preoccupations – yet they will likely hear the same plea they’ve heard for the past few years: stepping up commitments will require finance.

A submission by African countries in August said the “implementation gap” has at its core a shortfall in the provision of funds, and that bridging it will require predictable and accessible finance.

Pacific island nations launched a similar call, arguing there is “a treaty obligation” that developing countries, including themselves, will effectively implement commitments depending on the finance and technology made available by developed nations.

To close this gap, the EU made a proposal at preliminary talks in Nairobi in August to expand the base of donors so that richer developing countries could voluntarily assume donor responsibilities. Saudi Arabia and Qatar rejected the idea, while China said this should not weaken the responsibility of developed nations.

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So far, wealthy governments have missed a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection by 2025, reaching only about $16bn per year from 2023 to 2025, according to an OECD report. By 2030, the GBF aims for developed countries to directly transfer $30bn per year, and mobilise $200bn from all sources.

The UN report released on Thursday shows even slower progress in redirecting harmful subsidies such as those which encourage the overuse of fertilisers and the production and consumption of new fossil fuels, and below-market fees that encourage overfishing. UN Environment estimates that for every dollar spent protecting nature, $30 goes on destroying it.

UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists in Yerevan that “if you hear there is no finance, please do not believe it” because economies are continuing to grow. “It is being spent on activities that harm the economy rather than those that work with nature and sustain life on this planet,” she said.

Guterres said developed countries tend to say they are grappling with budget constraints due to increased defence expenditure, which “in my view does not justify a reduction” in international aid. He added that existing resources can be multiplied if they are used to mobilise private capital.

Campaigners, companies and the Armenian government want to shift the needle on this situation at COP17 by highlighting how positive subsidies help restore biodiversity. They will launch a flagship call to action that will be taken forward by countries and groups working to reform damaging incentives.

Global review: the main act

The Global Review of Collective Progress – a bit like the Global Stocktake for climate action – is set to be the most important outcome from COP17, and it will be the first time this process unfolds at the biodiversity talks. The actions decided in Yerevan will respond to the gaps outlined in the State of Biodiversity Action report and determine whether countries can turn the tide of biodiversity loss this decade.

Overall, the report shows that while countries have taken action to address all 23 targets in the GBF, none “present a fully positive picture”. A target to strengthen the resilience of ecosystems to climate impacts is the only one with high relative progress, the report says, as government have already made effective interventions that show “a positive trend”.

The report assessed each country’s national targets, which define their contribution to the global goals, as well as their separate National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) outlining how they will achieve the national targets.

But it does not paint a complete picture, since at the cut-off date, only 89 NBSAPs and national targets from 162 countries had been submitted, leaving out a couple of dozen plans that arrived late. Pacific island nations said this might undercount commitments.

Many of those lacking an NBSAP are biodiversity-rich developing countries, which say they need financial and technical support to fully develop these plans. Some large nations pending an NBSAP include South Africa, Bolivia and Russia.

Since the GBF was agreed in 2022, governments have mostly focused on developing their biodiversity targets and plans, while the lion’s share of implementation is expected to happen towards the end of the decade, according to UN biodiversity chief Schomaker.

But O’Donnell said “accelerated political ambition” is still needed to improve commitments and translate them into effective protection on the ground or at sea.

The post Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17

Countries will meet in Armenia this month to carry out the first global review of progress towards meeting key nature targets by 2030.

These targets – and the wider ambition to halt and reverse biodiversity loss around the world – were agreed in the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022.

But the ambitions will not be achieved in time for the 2030 deadline unless action “accelerates rapidly”, a key UN report found.

It noted that nations are falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets, which focus on restoring ecosystems, increasing nature finance and reducing harmful subsidies.

This report and other findings will inform the global progress review taking place at the COP17 biodiversity summit in Armenia over 19-30 October.

The sections below summarise the report’s findings on where progress has – and has not – been made on each of the 23 targets.

They also rank the extent to which countries have addressed elements of each target on a national basis. Click on each target for more information. Key terms are defined throughout each section and in a glossary below.

The post COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.

https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/nature-targets-2030-progress/

The amount of finance for nature delivered to date “falls far short” of what is needed to meet the UN’s global goals, according to a report released ahead of the COP17 biodiversity summit.

The global stocktaking report, prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD) ahead of this month’s summit in Armenia, finds that developed nations are failing to close the $200bn “biodiversity finance gap”.

Initiatives designed to support this goal are also stumbling, with a special “framework” fund for biodiversity receiving less than $140m from developed countries in the past two years and the “landmark” Cali Fund receiving only $6,000 from private companies.

The availability of finance – or lack thereof – is likely to be a key point of contention in negotiations at COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, which begin on 19 October.

Target for 2025 ‘not achieved’

At COP15 in 2022, 196 countries agreed to an ambitious global deal to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, dubbed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

Goal D of the agreement, shown below, states that countries must “close” a $700bn “biodiversity finance gap” by 2030.

This overall $700bn is made up of two parts: changes to nature-harming subsidies; and raising financial resources to support biodiversity.

Target 18 within the text calls for countries to “identify by 2025, and eliminate, phase out or reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity…progressively reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030”.

The remaining $200bn should be met by “mobilising” resources, according to target 19 of the GBF. It states that countries should “substantially and progressively increase the level of financial resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030.

The overarching $200bn can be from national budgets, multilateral development banks or money “mobilised” from the private sector.

However, the target also specifically states that “at least $20bn per year by 2025 and…at least $30bn per year by 2030” should be public biodiversity funding provided to developing countries by developed countries – or others that “voluntarily assume” their obligations.

According to the global stocktaking report prepared by the CBD, between 2020 and 2023, countries mobilised a cumulative total of just $186.4bn. This is equivalent to an average of less than $50bn per year.

While the report – published on 10 September 2026 – cautions that it is “still too early to draw any conclusions”, it adds that this total “falls far short” of what is needed to close the $200bn-per-year biodiversity finance gap.

It continues to specify that the milestone of raising “at least $20bn per year by 2025” in public finance was also “likely not achieved”.

The report states that reporting countries raised a cumulative total of just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity, across four years from 2020-23, as shown in the figure below. This amounts to an average of just $4.4bn per year.

These figures are supported by a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which suggests that global biodiversity finance reached $74.9-92.4bn per year between 2023 and 2025.

It adds that, of this, international public finance contributed around $16.1bn per year on average – nearly $4bn below the 2025 goal.

Moreover, the OECD report says that only $7.9bn in 2023 to $8.5bn in 2024 was “biodiversity-specific” funding, with another $5.7bn and $6.5bn, respectively, coming in the form of funds for other priorities, in which support for biodiversity was a secondary aim.

While the GBF sets targets for nature finance in 2025 and 2030, developed countries should be making similar contributions every year, according to thinktank Third World Network.

Faltering initiatives

There are two main channels of international public finance that developed countries can use to meet their biodiversity finance commitments under the GBF. These are official development finance (ODF) and the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).

Separate figures for these channels also show financing falling behind the subtargets set out in the GBF.

This includes the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), which was established at COP15 in 2022.

It is currently housed under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and reports directly to the biodiversity COP.

Despite an initial flurry of pledges for the initiative, developed nations had contributed less than $400m to the fund, as of July this year, according to data shared with Carbon Brief by the GEF.

Between August 2023 and 30 June 2026, the GBFF has received only $387.2m in signed commitments from 11 countries and one subnational government (Quebec in Canada).

The figure below shows that, after the initial pledges ahead of COP16 in 2024, there have only been a handful of new contributions to the fund.

Elsewhere, the Cali fund was created at the COP16 nature negotiations in Colombia in 2024.

It is the first-ever global fund for companies profiting from genetic data to contribute to conservation goals.

According to a working paper from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, if all 21,690 eligible firms shared their profits according to the fund’s rules, they could raise $3.6bn for nature annually. The paper adds that, under a realistic uptake from companies, this could generate $929m annually for nature.

To date, however, the fund has received only two contributions, totalling $6,000.

Finance gap ‘fight’

Ahead of COP17 in Armenia, experts tell Carbon Brief that finance will be the most closely watched element of the stocktake of progress.

For developing countries that “hold most of the world’s biodiversity and bear the greater burden of implementation” of nature targets, the need for this financing is “very real”, says Lim Li Ching of the Third World Network speaking to Carbon Brief. She adds:

“These amounts fall far short of the GBF’s target 19. Developed countries have regrettably not met their legal obligations…[T]his failure should not be used as an excuse to pivot to the private sector or market-based mechanisms, which struggle to raise finance at scale and often deepen social and ecological harm.”

Options for private and “innovative” finance include debt-for-nature swaps, biodiversity offsets and carbon credits, but these are harder to monitor and have often faced criticism.

The Cali Fund is one avenue for companies to contribute directly to the CBD’s goals, with dedicated, transparent allocations for conservation projects and Indigenous peoples.

Dr Siva Thambisetty, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics, tells Carbon Brief that the fund is still a voluntary measure and it is up to countries “to