Guterres warns world is off track on biodiversity targets ahead of COP17

Off track on the 2030 goals

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres presented the first global review of action under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework on Thursday, 15 October, at a press conference in Armenia, four days before the COP17 biodiversity summit opens in Yerevan on 19 October. The review concludes that none of the 23 global targets shows a fully positive picture and that significant gaps remain in how countries carry out the measures they promised. Guterres opened with good news: 90% of the parties that signed the agreement have set targets, and half of them have specific action plans. He then turned to the bad news, describing a clear gap between ambition and action. If the targets countries have currently pledged are met, only 26% of land and 12% of the sea would be protected, he said.

Money flowing the wrong way

Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, put the imbalance in numbers: for every dollar spent protecting nature, 30 dollars go to activities that destroy it. Guterres made the same point in Yerevan, saying that subsidising fossil fuels amounts to subsidising suicide and that hydrocarbons are heating the planet and are a scourge for biodiversity. Governments have found it hard to cut subsidies that harm nature, a commitment they made in 2022 whose progress is to be reviewed at COP17. Guterres said countries are expected to reach the 2030 goals, but, as with harmful subsidies, they are behind on nearly every milestone. Bloomberg puts the amount needed each year to achieve the goals at an estimated $700 billion, and governments disagree over how to raise it. Separately, 130 companies including BNP Paribas, Danone and Hermès wrote to governments in early October urging them to reform financial incentives estimated at $2.6 billion a year that still direct excessive public money toward activities that deplete natural resources.

Cop15 promises slipping

The 2022 agreement reached at Cop15 in Montreal set 23 targets, including protecting 30% of the planet for nature, restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems, and tackling $500bn of environmentally damaging subsidies. Almost every country backed it, the United States and the Vatican City being the exceptions. Since then action has fallen short, and governments have acknowledged in preparatory meetings that they are off track on every one of the targets. The traffic-light system used to rate national action is filled with yellow, orange and red. The sequence of recent steps leading to the summit is set out below.

What comes next at COP17

COP17 opens on Monday, 19 October, in Yerevan, where delegates will assess progress toward the targets and explore ways to speed up action. Guterres told the press that financing, capacity, cooperation and data are still missing from the progress the report describes. He called on governments to create the right incentives, remove harmful subsidies and strengthen social protection measures. He also warned that nature will not be saved by good intentions alone and described three interlinked global crises, the first of which is the climate crisis. The preparatory scorecard does not look good, and the summit is meant to measure how far the 2030 targets have slipped.