YEREVAN, Armenia — Governments meeting at the United Nations biodiversity conference in Armenia closed two weeks of talks Oct. 31 by adopting nearly 50 decisions, including a plan they called the Yerevan Pathway to speed up global efforts to protect nature, according to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.
The conference, known as COP17, was the first formal review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the 2022 agreement that set 23 targets for 2030. A report prepared for the review, the State of Biodiversity Action, found the world is off track to meet those targets, the convention’s secretariat said.
The Yerevan Pathway is the negotiated response to that review. According to the secretariat, it sets priorities through 2030 on reforming subsidies and incentives that harm nature, providing financial, scientific and technical support to developing countries, aligning national budgets with the framework’s goals, and strengthening how countries carry out, monitor and report on their commitments.
The secretariat said nearly $2 billion in new biodiversity funding was announced during the meeting. That included $560 million under the latest replenishment of the Global Environment Facility and its Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, $500 million through the Species Recovery Alliance and more than $330 million through the Value Nature Fund. The Asian Development Bank also announced a biodiversity bond and investment incubator, the secretariat said, without giving an amount.
Other decisions covered protected areas and forests, sustainable wildlife management, invasive species, marine and coastal biodiversity, synthetic biology and the risk assessment of genetically modified organisms. Parties also adopted operating rules, called the Sevan Guidelines, for a new permanent body on Article 8(j) of the convention, which addresses the knowledge and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Hambardzum Matevosyan, the conference president, said the meeting showed that “differences can be bridged, commitments can become decisions and cooperation can deliver.”
Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the convention, said “the test is not what governments agreed in Yerevan, but what they change when they return home.”
Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, said, “In Yerevan, we saw environmental multilateralism prevail once again.”
The meetings also included sessions of the parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources. The next conference, COP18, will be held in Ecuador in 2028, according to the secretariat.
The United States is not a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity. UN News first reported the outcome of the talks.
This report is based on information from the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Source: Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity
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