Adoption in overtime in Yerevan

Almost 200 nations approved two agreements on Friday at the COP17 biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia's capital, after nearly two weeks of negotiations that ran into extra time. Delegates cheered as the crucial texts were approved in overtime following two weeks of tense talks.

COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan brought down the gavel to applause as he closed adoption of the documents. "And that's it. Perfect," he said. The final versions of the texts were not immediately made public.

Targets falling short

The agreements had to respond to a stark warning: before COP17, the UN cautioned that countries would fail to meet the goal of halting biodiversity loss by 2030, set in a 2022 global pact, unless they urgently corrected course. Most of the 2030 targets are falling short, among them:

• •protecting 30 percent of Earth's land and oceans
• •tackling pollution
• •boosting conservation finance for poorer countries

A draft COP17 text called on countries to accelerate efforts to keep the pact alive and said increased action was needed against the root drivers of nature loss. The document proposed various options to achieve the 2030 goal, and it was not immediately clear which options survived into the final text.

Money and subsidies divided the room

Conservation finance proved one of the hardest issues. Countries wrangled over reforming subsidies and other incentives that encourage activities harmful to nature, such as fossil fuels, intensive agriculture and overfishing. A separate dispute concerned new funding sources for global conservation, a hot-button issue with public budgets under strain amid an energy crisis and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

By the report's estimate, the world needs an estimated $700 billion more every year than it currently spends to restore degraded ecosystems, save endangered species and conserve habitats like forests and wetlands.

Other sticking points included:

• •The European Union led a charge for wealthy emerging economies such as China to join in paying for global conservation, a contentious issue at COP17.
• •A draft text circulated on Friday invited countries outside the list of developed country donors to voluntarily join the group, signalling a possible compromise.

Cali Fund and attacks on science

Negotiations also struggled over refining the Cali Fund, a UN mechanism for sharing profits from corporations that use genetic data from plants and other organisms. The fund set out to raise $1 billion a year for conservation in developing countries when it launched in early 2025, but so far it has attracted around $10,000.

Science itself became contested. A small handful of countries were accused of blocking acceptance of benchmark findings by a UN-backed biodiversity body. "The attacks on science have bothered me a lot," French Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut said.

Ministers, precedents and the next summit

Around 70 ministers joined the negotiations this week in an effort to nudge things along, while indigenous leaders and civil society activists urged greater urgency. There was precedent for the overtime drama: the 2024 biodiversity summit in Colombia ran overtime as nations haggled over conservation finance and ended without a deal, and the talks only concluded when an agreement was reached in Rome in 2025.

COP17 was expected to decide on Friday whether Panama or Ecuador will host the next biodiversity summit in 2028.