Enviro News Asia, Yerevan — The United Nations has urged countries participating in the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17) to translate global commitments into concrete action on the ground as delegates gather in Yerevan, Armenia, to assess progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted four years ago.
Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, stressed the importance of engaging Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and young people in accelerating efforts to protect ecosystems. The summit is focusing on the “30 by 30” target, which aims to conserve 30 percent of the world’s land and sea areas by 2030.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that human activities driving the global environmental crisis are putting more than one million species at risk of extinction. Although protected areas have expanded by 1.3 million square kilometres on land and six million square kilometres at sea since 2022, global progress remains too slow, according to the UN.
Armenia’s Ambassador to the UN, Paruyr Hovhannisyan, said COP17 was focused on closing implementation gaps, measuring progress under national action plans and mobilizing funding for biodiversity protection.
The global framework calls for biodiversity funding to reach at least US$200 billion annually by 2030, drawing on a range of public, private, domestic and international sources.
Delegates are also discussing the operationalization of the Cali Fund, which is designed to channel contributions from companies benefiting from the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources towards biodiversity conservation, including support for Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
The UN has emphasized that transforming financial systems, business practices and consumption patterns is essential to slowing nature loss and achieving global biodiversity targets. (*)
