Diplomats from 196 countries will gather in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October for COP17 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The summit is a critical checkpoint: it falls exactly halfway between the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2030 deadline for its 23 targets. According to the CBD, countries are not on track to meet 22 of those targets, raising the stakes for the negotiations.
Carbon Brief has launched an interactive tracker that follows the draft negotiating texts for the COP, as well as for the Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols. The tracker highlights areas of disagreement using square brackets, with colour coding showing how far parties are from consensus. It also includes draft decisions from the CBD's three subsidiary bodies, including the new body on Indigenous peoples and local communities established at COP16 in Cali.
Two agenda items will dominate the Yerevan talks: the global review of progress toward the framework, and finance. Finance is the most contentious issue, split into resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. Disagreement over the mechanism caused the suspension of COP16 in Cali in 2024. Global south countries want a separate mechanism under the control of the CBD, while global north countries largely prefer keeping the existing arrangement under the Global Environment Facility. At the resumed COP16 session in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap toward a permanent mechanism, but the details remain unresolved as negotiators arrive in Yerevan.