This month, nearly every country on Earth will gather in Yerevan to take stock of a decade-long effort to protect the natural world, with one headline target now within reach even as progress on others lags well behind.
In late 2022, governments reached an ambitious once-in-a-decade deal to better protect nature amid scientific warnings that the planet is going through the largest loss of life since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Now, they are assessing their progress on the targets for the first time.
What is Cop17?
Every two years, signatories to the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD) hold a summit. The convention is one of three created at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 alongside climate change and desertification (the latter’s Cop17 having been held in Mongolia in August).
The diversity Cop covers three main areas: conservation of the natural world, its sustainable use, and how to share the benefits of its genetic resources. This year will be the 17th time that signatories have formally met, where the main focus is assessing progress on this decade’s targets such as protecting 30% of land and sea for nature, reforming $500bn (£375bn) of environmentally damaging subsidies, and restoring 30% of the planet’s degraded ecosystems.
Governments have never met a single UN target on nature since the
biodiversity convention was created in Rio in 1992, and there has been a big push to make sure that the years until the 2030 deadline are different.
When and where is it? Who is in charge?
Armenia is the host for Cop17, which will take place in the capital, Yerevan, between 19 and 30 October, and is tasked with corralling governments to take action and speed up progress towards the targets.
Ahead of the summit, countries met in Nairobi to discuss their priorities, concluding that they are off track on every one of the 23 targets they agreed in Montreal in 2022. In Armenia, environment ministers must decide what they are going to do about it.
It will be a challenge: the last biodiversity summit, Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, ended without a clear agreement on key topics after negotiations ran out of time, and another round of talks were needed in Rome to finish the meeting.
Are the 2030 biodiversity targets out of reach?
Not quite. There are signs of real progress on some targets. The aim of protecting 30% of Earth for nature is the headline target this decade, inspired by the Harvard biologist EO Wilson’s vision of protecting half of the planet for the long-term survival of humanity.
According to one estimate, governments are close to reaching this number for land, so far agreeing to place 27.5% of terrestrial areas under protection as nature reserves, national parks and other areas. The target is not about simply creating new protected areas on paper: it emphasises effective conservation management of areas that are particularly crucial for the healthy functioning of ecosystems, such as wetlands, rainforests, grasslands and coral reefs.
Other targets have seen almost no progress. An aim to reform and repurpose $500bn of environmentally damaging subsidies has received almost no action from governments. From tax benefits given to fossil fuel companies to state support for destroying rainforests in order to expand agricultural frontiers, governments remain a major driver of biodiversity loss.
What might an ambitious deal at Cop17 look like – and what might prevent it?
“This is a really important opportunity for parties to do a serious course correction,” said Guido Broekhoven, head of multilateral policy at the World Wide Fund for Nature, adding that countries need to commit to concrete actions to get the world back on track.
Governments need to do more – and fast – if they want to meet some of this decade’s targets. In terms of what might prevent it, in a word: money.
The world has changed a lot since the deal was reached in 2022, when there was enthusiastic support for action to better protect nature after the Covid-19 pandemic. While the US is not a signatory to the UN convention on biological diversity, it was a major funder of conservation through USAID, which has been dramatically cut by the Trump administration. Britain and other European countries have also curtailed their funding for conservation around the world.
Developing countries have long been clear that there cannot be more ambition on conservation without extra resources. Without funding – not just agreed, but delivered – it is unlikely there will be more progress on achieving this decade’s targets.
Some countries – such as Norway and Sweden – have paid up, but others are slower to do so, research has shown. “Japan stands out as a very large economy that is not putting much in terms of international nature finance forward,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature.
Private finance for biodiversity has also been falling since 2022. In 2025, the Cali Fund was launched to encourage private companies that benefit from nature’s genetic resources to contribute to conservation. It remains virtually empty, having received just $6,000 in contributions since its launch in February 2025 – far short of a target to raise $1bn annually.
Another challenge is the sheer volume of issues negotiators will need to thrash out. “It’s a very busy agenda,” said Catherine Weller, Fauna & Flora’s director for global policy. “There’s a genuine risk that they might not get through it all.”
