The world promised to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 – now it needs to turn pledges into action

The UN’s main biodiversity summit, held every two years, wrapped up in Yerevan, Armenia, on October 31.

Biodiversity summits don’t attract the same fanfare as their climate change equivalents, yet loss of nature threatens food systems, water security, health, livelihoods and cultural traditions. Forests, soils, wetlands and oceans absorb around half the carbon dioxide humans emit, while climate change is itself one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss.

This summit, technically the 17th Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference, or Cop17, was meant to take stock of progress and accelerate action on protecting biodiversity. Back in 2022, the same conference launched an ambitious framework to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, a goal that will require closing an US$700 billion (£520 billion) per year finance gap.

Targets include protecting 30% of land and sea, restoring degraded ecosystems, and halting the extinction of threatened species. Yerevan was the halfway point, and the first time countries formally reviewed how they were doing.

So, how did they do?

The first global review of the framework, State of Biodiversity Action, showed how little progress has been made. Almost 90% of countries have set national targets, but fewer than half are on track. The targets lagging furthest behind – covering business impacts, unsustainable consumption, harmful subsidies and finance – are the ones that need action beyond environment ministries and conservation programmes.

Who pays?

It comes down to money: who should pay for biodiversity protection? The framework calls for US$200 billion a year from all sources by 2030, including US$30 billion per year through international finance.

Two debates stood out. The first concerned who should manage the funds. Lower-income countries have argued for a new funding mechanism under the CBD’s control. Many high-income countries prefer the current Global Environment Facility, which critics say is bureaucratic and hard for local communities to access. Decisions on a new financial mechanism have been pushed to the next summit, Cop18, in Ecuador in 2028.

The second debate was about extending the list of countries expected to provide finance to developing countries. Emerging economies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar resisted, as it would shift their contributions from voluntary to obligatory. In the end, it was agreed that countries that now want to contribute as donors can “signal interest” before Cop18.

The summit presidency announced that more than US$1.8 billion had been pledged from governments, philanthropic organisations and investors. That is welcome, but negligible compared with what is needed. Recent cuts to development aid have made the shortfall even harder to address.

The negotiations looked at alternative ways of valuing nature, such as natural capital accounting or treating nature as infrastructure. “Biodiversity is not just for tree-huggers,” said the CBD’s executive secretary Astrid Schomaker at a workshop in Yerevan, suggesting it should matter to business.

Cutting or redirecting US$500 billion a year in harmful subsidies would help fund all this. But though this is the framework’s target 18, little progress has been made.

Who benefits from genetic data?

So-called digital sequence information, or DSI, was another subject of contention. This is genetic data gathered from plants, animals and microbes, stored in online databases and used by companies to develop medicines, crops and cosmetics. However, the countries and communities where these organisms come from have rarely been paid for their use.

The 2024 biodiversity summit in Colombia created the Cali Fund to change this. Large companies using DSI are expected to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of their revenue to this fund. At least half of the money is meant to go to Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The fund was expected to raise at least US$1 billion a year. By the end of this year’s summit, just five companies had committed a total of just US$10,565.

Part of the problem is that contributions are voluntary. Negotiators debated who counts as a user of DSI, whether only large companies should pay, and how to avoid companies being charged twice under national and international schemes. After fraught discussions and delays, many of the key decisions were postponed to the next summit in 2028.

The role of Indigenous people

Indigenous peoples and local communities manage or hold rights over a large share of the world’s remaining biodiverse land. In 2024, parties created a permanent body to strengthen their role.

In Yerevan, discussions focused on how it should work: who leads it, and who chooses the representatives. Campaigners warned that governments were deciding how Indigenous peoples should be represented instead of letting them decide for themselves. In the 12-hour-long final plenary, the body’s rules of operation were agreed, but as an advisory body, its influence will depend on whether governments listen.

Women’s rights were another focus. The global progress review found that only about a quarter of countries’ national targets address women’s land rights or access, leaving women with little power in conservation decisions. The Yerevan summit encouraged governments to embed gender equity into national biodiversity strategies and data collection.

Halfway and behind

Finance, DSI and Indigenous rights may have been separate items on the agenda, but they raise the same questions: who pays to protect nature, who gets to decide, and who benefits?

The agreed Yerevan Pathway urges countries to take faster action on priorities including cutting subsidies that harm nature, providing financial and technical support to developing countries, and aligning national budgets with biodiversity goals. But it leans heavily on commitments already made.

Outside the main negotiations in Yerevan, Indigenous groups, campaigners and non-governmental organisations showcased their work protecting and restoring nature in spite of limited funding. The tension between biodiversity targets and the extractive industries was also visible in protests against a controversial gold mine, which recently began production in south-eastern Armenia.

Governments now need to back their commitments with money that reaches the people doing the work, an end to economic incentives that drive nature loss, and a meaningful say for Indigenous people and local communities.

Gabriella Santini previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), and the Parkes Foundation.

Emily Woodhouse and Simon Chin-Yee do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.