COP17: The world has a plan to save nature. Does this work?

COP17, that is United Nations Biodiversity Conferenceis an important midpoint in global efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The meeting, taking place from 19 to 30 October, will review progress made, identify countries lagging behind, and, crucially, consider how to accelerate action in the next four years.

Here’s what you need to know:

First things first: What is the global biodiversity framework?

The big picture: Think Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as a global blueprint for stopping and reversing natural destruction.

Agreed in 2022, it contains 23 targets for 2030 and four long-term goals for 2050. It addresses the main causes of biodiversity loss, including changes in land and ocean use, unsustainable exploitation of species, climate change, pollution and invasive species.

His most famous ambition is “30 times 30”: conserve 30 percent of land and sea by 2030, the UN’s deadline for achieving it Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

However, the framework goes further, including funding for biodiversity, reforming detrimental incentives, encouraging more sustainable production and consumption, and addressing business’s impact and dependence on nature.

So, how are we?

Reality check: We’re not moving fast enough.

There has been movement. Nearly 90 percent of the 196 parties in Convention on Biological Diversity have set national biodiversity targets, nearly 60 percent have developed national biodiversity strategies and action plans, and more than 70 percent have submitted national reports.

However, less than half of the national targets assessed by political parties are on track. The ambition is also to fall short of the 30 by 30 target, while there are still large gaps in funding, capacity, cooperation and the data needed to track progress.

As Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the leaders in Yerevan on Friday: “Midway to 2030, Yerevan is our moment of accountability.”

What really happened at COP17?

Why this matters: COP17 is fundamentally about moving from promises to implementation.

Among the major issues that the government must face are:

• Taking stock: Countries will conduct the first global review of collective progress under this framework, assessing what has been achieved since 2022 and where more rapid action is needed.
• Closing the implementation gap: The question is how to translate national targets and plans into measurable results on the ground.
• Finding money: This framework requires at least that $200 billion per year from all sources by 2030including at least $30 billion in international biodiversity funding, according to Armenia’s UN Ambassador Paruyr Hovhannisyan.
• Making the Cali Fund work: Governments will have the opportunity to advance practical arrangements for such funds, designed to support the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the commercial use of digital sequence information on genetic resources.
• Tracking progress: Better monitoring, data, capacity and cooperation are needed so countries can measure whether these commitments are actually producing results.
• Changing economy: Some of the most lagging areas require action outside the environment ministry, including in the areas of finance, business, sustainable consumption and perverse incentives.

Yerevan exam

For hosts Armenia, success would mean COP17 being a “reviewing the COP” and “implementing the COP”.

“We cannot consider 2030 as a long deadline,” said Ambassador Hovhannisyan UN News. “The decisions taken in Yerevan should help close the gap between commitment and results on the pitch.”

Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenian Minister of the Environment and COP17 presidential candidate, explained the progress simply: COP15 produced the framework and COP16 developed the mechanisms to implement it. COP17, he saidmust determine “where we stand, what is working, where progress is still missing, and what needs to change”.

The main thing is

Biodiversity may sound abstract. The loss is absolutely nothing.

As António Guterres reminded leaders on Friday, the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe depend on it. The question in Yerevan is whether countries can translate ambitious global agreements into action quickly enough.

On Thursday, the launch of a UN major report Evaluating global progress under the landmark Kunming framework, Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, distills the challenges: “We know where we are. We know where the gaps are. Now, we have to work together to close them.”