The World Has a Biodiversity Plan. Now We Need to Deliver It.

The natural world is filled with wonders—from monarch butterflies migrating thousands of miles to 4,000-year-old trees, from ant supercolonies containing hundreds of millions of ants to elephant matriarchs that guide their herds. It underpins our economies, food systems, public health, cultures, and climate. Yet despite continued recognition of its importance, the world invests far more in activities that take from and destroy nature rather than protect it. And while awareness of the biodiversity crisis has grown, implementation of activities to reverse course still continues to lag. The first global review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) found that countries remain off track to achieve any of the framework's goals and targets (adopted by nearly every country in 2022, the KMGBF is the world’s shared plan for halting and reversing biodiversity loss).

Scientists have spent years warning that incremental change will not be enough. The biodiversity crisis is driven by how we produce food, manage land, extract resources, and value nature itself. Addressing those underlying drivers requires what researchers have called “transformative change”—fundamental shifts in the policies, incentives, and systems that continue to reward environmental destruction. It ultimately reflects a broader disconnect between societies and the natural systems that sustain us. Nature is often treated as something external to our economies and communities rather than the foundation upon which all life depends. 

At the Convention on Biological Diversity 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia, in October 2026, governments gathered for the first major global check-in on progress toward the KMGBF. The assessment that the world is off track with meeting our targets to curb the worst impacts of the biodiversity crisis was sobering, and while progress is happening, it is not at the pace or scale required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

And with COP17 structured as an implementation COP, the outstanding questions weren’t focused on whether we know what needs to be done to protect wildlife and nature, but whether governments are willing to make the political and financial choices necessary to do it.

COP17 revealed three uncomfortable truths about biodiversity finance

1. First, governments are still not investing at the scale required.

   Countries agreed that biodiversity conservation requires dramatically greater investment, including mobilizing at least $200 billion from all sources annually by 2030. Yet current funding remains far short of that goal, and developed country investments and commitments to developing countries remain off track—by some estimates, only about 25 percent of the agreed-upon $20 billion annually for developing countries has been committed.

2. Second, private finance alone won’t close the gap.

   Throughout COP17, discussions focused heavily on biodiversity credits, offsets, bonds, and other approaches that are intended to attract private investment, due to the lack of flows from public sources. While these tools may play an important role, countries understand that they are only one piece of the financing puzzle and cannot generate funding at the scale needed to close the biodiversity funding gap and halt biodiversity loss. 

3. Third, the biggest source of money may already exist.

   The larger opportunity may lie in redirecting existing flows of money. Every year, governments continue to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that incentivize activities contributing to biodiversity loss. Former IPBES Chair Dr. Robert Watson has argued that reducing and eliminating environmentally harmful subsidies may be the single-most important action governments can take to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. According to estimates by the Paulson Institute, roughly $500 billion of the world’s estimated $700 billion annual biodiversity financing gap could be addressed through reforming the subsidies that drive deforestation, habitat loss, overfishing, and other forms of ecological degradation. Redirecting even a portion of those resources toward nature-positive activities could do more to close the biodiversity funding gap than many of the financing mechanisms currently dominating negotiations.

So where do we go from here?

The answer is not simply more targets. The world already has a biodiversity plan through the KMGBF, and many countries are developing their own national and regional plans, albeit many of those plans fall short of the level of ambition required. What is needed now is the political will, financing, and partnerships required to achieve it, and that will depend on protecting and restoring nature at scale, directing far greater financial resources toward biodiversity, and embracing the reality that climate and nature solutions must go hand in hand.

1. Protect and restore ecosystems at scale

   Scientists have warned that up to one million species face extinction, many within decades, while wildlife populations have declined dramatically over the past half century. Despite this projection, there are also reasons for optimism to turn this tide. The global 30x30 movement is creating momentum to conserve at least 30 percent of the world’s lands and inland waters by 2030, while the United Nations High Seas Treaty has also created an unprecedented opportunity to expand protection for biodiversity in vast areas of the ocean that have long lacked effective conservation measures. In West Africa, for example, we are working alongside governments and regional partners to advance a shared approach to implementing 30x30 across the region. Biodiversity loss does not stop at national borders and neither should solutions. By coordinating conservation planning and aligning priorities across countries, regional approaches can help accelerate progress while demonstrating what collective action for nature can look like.

2.  Close the biodiversity finance gap

   Ambitious biodiversity goals cannot be achieved without the resources to implement them. Financing remains one of the largest barriers to progress. Innovative financing mechanisms can help, but they cannot become an excuse to avoid harder conversations about public finance, harmful subsidies, and accountability. Governments must be willing to ask more of those that have enriched themselves at nature’s expense and redirect resources away from activities that destroy nature and toward those that protect and restore it. Redirecting those harmful subsidies and increasing investment in nature-positive solutions may be among the most impactful actions that countries can take to accelerate progress.

3.  Treat climate and biodiversity as one challenge

   The biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis are too often discussed separately, even though they are deeply intertwined. Climate change accelerates biodiversity loss, and biodiversity loss weakens the ecosystems that help buffer communities from climate impacts and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Success in one depends on the other. Healthy ecosystems absorb and store carbon, help regulate local temperatures, reduce flood and drought risks, protect communities from storms and wildfires, and strengthen resilience in the face of extreme weather. Efforts to address one crisis while neglecting the other are shortsighted and unlikely to succeed. Countries can also use their limited resources more efficiently by connecting their biodiversity and climate efforts with other relevant commitments, such as treaties on wildlife exploitation and trade and conventions to address pollution and waste, along with the High Seas Treaty.

Humanity’s future depends on the health of the natural world. Protecting biodiversity is an investment in healthier communities, stronger economies, greater resilience, and a more livable future. We know what must be done. The challenge now and ahead is whether governments and our current economic systems are prepared and willing to value nature and wildlife as the foundation upon which life, stability, security, and our shared prosperity depends.

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