Listen: What did COP17 on biodiversity bring?

Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network. EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms. Find the full transcript below: The COP17 biodiversity summit wrapped up on Saturday morning in Yerevan. Delegates from nearly every country were in the room, yet very little came out of it. So what should we take away from it? Let’s start with the problem that comes up at almost every COP. They bring together a huge number of countries. And they all need to back the declaration at the end. So it is very hard to agree on measures that actually have an impact. There was one success, though, back in 2022. Participants adopted the Kunming-Montreal framework, with clear targets: restoring at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2030, and providing 20 billion dollars a year in financial aid to developing countries. That was four years ago. So are these goals on track? No. Several reports published ahead of the COP sounded the alarm. According to one of them, and this is staggering, not a single target is on track.To reach the global goals, investment in ecosystem restoration would need to be multiplied by four. It’s a bit like the climate COPs, with their limited results since the famous Paris Agreement in 2015. Except that biodiversity gets even less media attention, and therefore even less pressure to deliver. That said, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The commitments are often disappointing compared with what is needed. But they are still better than nothing. So what did countries actually agree on? First, they agreed on the diagnosis I just mentioned: that countries are behind on their 2030 goals. That alone was already a fight. Then there is a call to speed up work, but in very broad terms. Language never goes far, because every single country has to sign off. And that, of course, is the heart of the problem. On the two most anticipated topics, there was no real breakthrough. The first is subsidies that contribute to destroying nature. We’re talking, for example, about subsidies for fossil fuels or pesticide production. According to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, governments spend no less than 2 trillion dollars on them every year. But the talks led to very little. That’s because several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, and even Brazil, held back ambition. To the point that the adopted texts don’t even name these harmful subsidies. All they say is that parties are encouraged to work towards Target 18 of the Kunming-Montreal framework. Which, in the end, will only mean something to those who know the framework inside out. The second topic met more or less the same fate: this was about funding for developing countries. Basically, everyone agrees that more financial aid is needed, but nobody wants to commit to giving more. The only concrete commitment is to take stock, by next year, of what each country is really contributing. Now, despite those poor results, most of the NGOs present in Yerevan still defend the COP process. As I said, it’s better than nothing. For example, one outcome was a decision recognising the work of IPBES, the biodiversity equivalent of the IPCC. Even that was a battle for nature’s defenders. But recognising the facts and the science is the starting point for everything else. So we should not throw that away.