COP17 Ends in Yerevan With Yerevan Pathway Agreement but Finance Gap Remains

Governments meeting in Yerevan adopted the Yerevan Pathway on Saturday after talks ran through the night. The decision commits countries to faster action on reducing harmful subsidies, increasing finance for developing nations and aligning national budgets with biodiversity goals. The two-week COP17 conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity closed with the finance needed to deliver the goals still largely unsecured.

The meeting conducted the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in 2022. Delegates concluded that progress had been made but that the world remained off track on almost all of its 2030 targets. Those targets include conserving 30 percent of land, inland waters and marine areas, restoring 30 percent of degraded ecosystems, reforming harmful subsidies and mobilising 200 billion dollars a year.

The Yerevan Pathway sets a timetable for the next steps. Countries agreed to report on subsidy reform and domestic spending alignment before the next conference. COP18 will be held in Quito, Ecuador, in 2028. Several side agreements were announced, including a Yerevan Platform on Mountain and Freshwater Ecosystems and additional funding for the Global Fund on Coral Reefs and the Kunming Biodiversity Fund.

Negotiators worked overnight on the final text. The political backdrop was described as fractious. The conference opened on 19 October and was scheduled to end on 30 October. The extension allowed the pathway language to be finalised. No new large-scale funding pledge matching the 200-billion-dollar annual target was announced in the closing plenary.

The framework requires developed countries to increase international biodiversity finance. Many developing countries argued that without predictable funding the national targets remain aspirational. The pathway language calls for increased finance but does not set a new quantified commitment beyond the existing framework. Implementation will be measured by what governments do before the Quito meeting.

Armenia hosted the conference in its capital. Mountain and freshwater ecosystems received particular attention because of recent glacier melt, drying water bodies and losses of endemic species in the region. The new platform is intended to coordinate action on those systems. Coral-reef funding announcements focused on reef-positive projects that support communities and economies facing climate pressure.

The next major climate meeting, COP31, is scheduled for 9-20 November in Antalya, Turkey. Biodiversity and climate negotiations remain separate but increasingly linked in national planning. The Yerevan outcome leaves the 30-by-30 targets intact while acknowledging that current trajectories will not meet them without accelerated domestic and international finance.

Delegates left with a procedural roadmap and a clear statement that the first stocktake shows insufficient progress. The practical test is whether countries revise harmful subsidy programmes and increase protected-area budgets in the next two years. The finance gap identified in Yerevan will reappear on the agenda in Quito unless new resources are mobilised in the interim.