Countries meeting at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia, have completed the first "global review" of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030, and it does not make comfortable reading. The review "notes with deep concern" that unless action is "rapidly accelerated", the goal and its 23 targets "will not be achieved", according to Carbon Brief's analysis of the summit's outcomes.
The talks marked the halfway point of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed in 2022 and due to be met by 2030. Unlike COP16 in Colombia, which ran so far over time that it lost its quorum and had to resume in Rome months later, Yerevan signed off on all its major texts after a final plenary of nearly 12 hours. Countries also voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host COP18 in 2028.
Money was the hardest question. The review records that developed countries failed to meet their commitment to raise "at least $20bn a year by 2025" for nature, and delegates pointed to falling aid and a 27% drop in environmental funding for 2026-30. After a push by developed countries to "broaden the contributor base" to emerging economies such as China, India, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the compromise lets countries that wish to join the list of donors "signal interest" in confidential talks before COP18. Criteria for a permanent financial mechanism after 2030 were agreed, but its structure was left to COP18.
For farming, the sharpest debate was over subsidies. Governments spend as much as $1.8tn a year on subsidies and incentives that may harm biodiversity, particularly in fossil fuels and agriculture. Target 18 of the framework asks countries to identify these by 2025 and to cut them by at least $500bn a year by 2030, yet Carbon Brief found in July that 84% of countries missed the identification deadline, and the review calls progress "insufficient".
Earlier drafts "urge[d]" stronger action, but the final text only "encourages" countries to speed up reform, "in accordance with national circumstances". Saudi Arabia and Russia pushed back on the paragraph, and near the end India proposed removing it, while Colombia, the UK, Norway and EU nations were among those who wanted it kept. UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker called subsidy reform "politically charged and socially sensitive".
Outside the negotiations, the International Institute for Sustainable Development launched a "friends of target 18" group, co-chaired by Colombia and Finland, to help governments share ways of reforming subsidies, and published a report finding countries "not on track". Land-use change, mainly for agriculture, remains one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, so how farm support is redesigned will shape whether the 2030 goals can still be reached.
Photo: Serouj Ourishian / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Carbon Brief
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