UN Biodiversity Summit Ends With 'Yerevan Pathway' as Funding Gap Persists

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries meeting under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity closed out COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, in the early hours of Saturday, October 31, roughly a day behind schedule, after agreeing to a new blueprint intended to speed up stalled progress toward the world's 2030 biodiversity targets.

The agreement, dubbed the Yerevan Pathway, emerged from the first formal global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the sweeping 23-target pact nearly every country adopted in 2022 to halt and reverse the loss of nature by the end of the decade. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity's own account of the two-week conference, delegates adopted nearly 50 decisions in all, covering everything from invasive species and synthetic biology to marine conservation and the role of Indigenous communities in managing land.

A review that found the world off track

The review itself delivered a sobering verdict. Nearly 90 percent of parties have now submitted national biodiversity targets, but fewer than half of those assessed are judged to be on track, according to UN figures cited at the summit. Organizers said more than $1.8 billion in new financing was pledged during the conference from governments, philanthropic foundations and private investors — among them a $500 million commitment from a coalition of philanthropic groups through 2030, plus tens of millions more funneled into the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund and a related Global Environment Facility program.

Even so, that sum remains a small fraction of the $200 billion a year the Kunming-Montreal framework calls for mobilizing by 2030, and delegates spent much of the conference's final days wrangling over who should pay and how. The Yerevan Pathway commits governments to accelerate work on an existing goal of cutting subsidies harmful to nature by at least $500 billion annually, to broaden the base of financial contributors on a voluntary basis, and to set criteria for a future permanent financing mechanism rather than establishing one outright. Armenia's environment minister, who presided over the talks as COP17 president, had cast the pathway beforehand as a way of "connecting the assessment of progress with practical solutions," according to the Armenian Ministry of Environment, which hosted the gathering at Yerevan's Meridian Expo Center.

Mixed reaction from conservation groups

Reaction from outside groups was measured. Daudi Sumba, chief conservation officer at WWF International, called the review "a strong signal" that must now be backed by real money, while Catherine Weller of Fauna & Flora International warned that governments "cannot just plod on to 2030 without a course correction," according to a report on the closing session. Anita de Horde of the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation struck a more optimistic note, saying the outcome showed "international cooperation can still deliver" at a moment when multilateral institutions are under strain, though she cautioned that success would ultimately be judged by "what governments implement" before the next summit.

That test comes quickly: governments are due to report further progress ahead of COP18 in Quito, Ecuador, in 2028, and global climate negotiations open in Turkey on November 9, according to wire coverage of the Yerevan talks. For now, the Yerevan Pathway stands as an acknowledgment that the targets set four years ago in Montreal are slipping out of reach without a sharper injection of political will — and money — before the decade is out.