COP17 Biodiversity Summit Ends with Finance Pledge Despite Stalled Progress

UN biodiversity negotiations in Yerevan, Armenia, concluded early Saturday with nations agreeing to ramp up action on nature targets while acknowledging a significant shortfall in conservation funding.

After two weeks of talks that stretched overnight into Saturday morning, delegates from nearly 200 countries signed off on several measures to address global biodiversity loss. The meeting’s president, Hambardzum Matevosyan, declared the deal finalized following intense negotiations. The agreement includes a commitment to accelerate efforts toward existing targets and reaffirms a goal to increase biodiversity finance to $30 billion annually by 2030.

Despite the new agreement, The Guardian reported that governments are currently on track to miss almost all of their nature goals, continuing a 34-year history of failing to meet international biodiversity targets. Critics at the summit called for major reforms to the UN process. Panama’s environment minister, Juan Carlos Navarro, told AFP the consensus-based system was "designed to fail," as it allows a single nation to block progress. He described much of the summit as "baloney and beautiful speeches."

Financial discrepancies remained a central issue in the Armenian capital. Conservation News cited OECD data indicating that annual biodiversity finance totaled no more than $92 billion by 2025, far below the $200 billion annual target set in previous years. Furthermore, the UN Environment Programme reported that while nature protection remains underfunded, global spending on activities that destroy nature—such as industrial agriculture—reaches approximately $7.3 trillion per year.

The BBC noted that while countries have collectively put 623 million acres of degraded land into protection, many nations are now redirecting international aid toward defense and energy costs. Environmental groups expressed cautious relief at the deal but warned that a massive "course correction" is still required. Catherine Weller of Fauna & Flora told the BBC that nations cannot simply "plod on to 2030" without more aggressive action to prevent ecosystem collapse.

Background

In 2022, nearly 200 countries adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, committing to halt and reverse the decline of nature. The framework includes 24 targets, such as protecting 30% of the planet's land and seas, restoring a third of degraded ecosystems, and reforming $500 billion in environmentally harmful subsidies by 2030.