The world is set to miss its 2030 conservation goals as finance and action have fallen short, leaders recognized at a UN biodiversity summit in Armenia’s capital, where they agreed to step up efforts after a final overnight session. Representatives from almost 200 countries gathered in Yerevan over the past two weeks to review progress on a landmark agreement set four years ago to protect about a third of the world’s land and seas by 2030. The COP17 talks on biodiversity concluded on Saturday with a recognition that conservation efforts were so far too slow to realistically achieve the goals of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
A plan was agreed to accelerate progress ahead of the next summit in Ecuador in two years, dubbed the Yerevan Pathway. It would mean redoubling efforts to tackle subsidies and incentives that are harmful to nature, increasing financial, scientific, and technical support for developing countries, and strengthening monitoring and reporting mechanisms. Steven Guilbeault, former Canadian minister of environment and climate change, said that finance remained one of the biggest obstacles to achieving global biodiversity goals.
The fact that a fund agreed at the last meeting—for companies profiting from genetic materials to voluntarily contribute to—stood largely empty was “especially disappointing.” “We need to mobilize substantially more public and private finance, reform subsidies that harm nature, and ensure that funding reaches the countries and communities on the front lines of the nature crisis,” he said.
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