A declaration, but not a resolution
The 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity closed in Yerevan on 30 October with the adoption of a declaration setting out priorities for the next phase of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Delegates from nearly 200 countries spent eleven days negotiating how to turn the framework’s 2030 targets, including the pledge to protect 30 percent of land and sea, into funded, trackable national plans.
The headline outcome was a funding package worth roughly $1.8bn, drawn from a mix of government pledges and multilateral contributions, aimed at helping lower-income countries build the monitoring and reporting systems the framework requires. Several of the toughest questions, including how richer countries will meet their resource-mobilisation commitments and how biodiversity finance will be tracked against existing aid flows, were pushed into working groups rather than settled in Yerevan.
The money problem COP17 could not fix
The financing gap was already visible before ministers arrived. A report published on 27 October by Campaign for Nature, the Pew Charitable Trusts and Rainforest Foundation Norway found that annual international funding for protected and conserved areas fell from more than $1.2bn in 2023 to $1bn in 2025. Africa’s share fell even further: the continent received about $389m in 2025, 32 percent below its 2022-2024 average, while funding to the least-developed countries fell 28 percent.
Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, said funding for the 30×30 target is “headed in the wrong direction,” arguing that funding decisions reflect political priorities rather than conservation need. Michael Owen, the report’s lead author, said the decade of growth in international conservation funding has stalled just as the 2030 deadline approaches.
What delegates agreed on
The Yerevan Declaration reaffirms the 30×30 target and commits signatories to strengthen national biodiversity strategies, but it stops short of binding new mobilisation targets. Negotiators pointed to financing mechanisms already in circulation, including Project Finance for Permanence agreements, the Legacy Landscapes Fund and debt-for-nature swaps, as the likeliest near-term vehicles for closing the gap rather than waiting for a fresh multilateral fund.
For Global South delegations, the test will be whether the $1.8bn package reaches national budgets faster than previous pledges, many of which have been criticised for slow disbursement. Civil-society observers in Yerevan said they would be watching for a disbursement timetable at COP18, since the declaration itself sets no binding deadline for releasing the funds.
Why it matters beyond the summit hall
The declaration’s reception has been muted rather than celebratory. Delegations from Africa and the Pacific, among the regions most dependent on international conservation finance, have said the outcome does little to reverse a multi-year decline in funding even as their obligations under the biodiversity framework remain unchanged. Germany remained the largest single bilateral donor in the 2025 data, at about $201m, while Canada’s contribution nearly doubled to roughly $40m, improvements that donors highlighted in Yerevan but that observers say fall well short of the $6bn benchmark researchers say is needed to align funding with the 30×30 goal.
Whether the declaration translates into faster, larger disbursements will become clearer well before the next COP. For now, it leaves governments with a strengthened mandate and a funding shortfall that the summit itself did not close.
Related: A new report on Africa’s 30×30 conservation funding details the scale of the shortfall the Yerevan declaration’s $1.8bn package is meant to help close.
*This article follows up earlier coverage of COP17’s opening sessions, reporting the summit’s closing outcomes and the funding figures released during its final week.*
