Global nature talks conclude in Yerevan with deal, but funding gaps persist

Delegates from nearly 200 countries meeting in Yerevan have agreed the key parts of a new action plan on nature, closing talks in the early hours of Saturday morning, hours after negotiations were due to finish. "And that's it. Perfect," said the meeting president, Hambardzum Matevosyan. The gathering came four years after the same countries signed the Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, a landmark deal committing them to "halt and reverse" the decline of nature. That agreement contained 24 targets, including placing 30 per cent of the world's land and seas under protection by the end of the decade. Progress has been limited. According to the UN, the world is on track to achieve just one of those two dozen targets, even as scientists warn the planet is in a sixth mass extinction event, with species dying out at around 100 times the natural rate because of human activities. In the new deal, countries acknowledged they were falling behind. "While not particularly exciting or detailed, it's good news that countries could reach agreement," said Catherine Weller of the environmental charity Fauna & Flora. "We cannot just plod on to 2030 without a course correction; nature is critical to all life on Earth: to our economies, to our wellbeing," she added. Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, told BBC News the world was still seeing an "appalling loss" threatening the collapse of ecosystems globally, but noted there were many examples worldwide of how to turn things around. Countries have put 623 million acres (252 million hectares) of degraded land into protection, an area larger than Greenland, and last month the WWF praised conservation efforts that have helped the recovery of species including elephants, green sea turtles and tigers. Money remains the main barrier. In 2022, nations agreed to direct $30bn (£22.4bn) towards nature recovery by the end of the decade and mobilise a further $170bn from private sources, but the UN says pledges are not coming at the rate required, as many governments redirect international aid to defence budgets and energy shocks. At this week's meeting, more than $1bn was pledged, half of it from philanthropists including Leonardo DiCaprio's Re:wild organisation. Anna Ducros, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development who attended the talks, said there had been some progress on commitments to reduce subsidies for environmentally harmful industries, citing government support for large-scale trawling. "Right now, we have the situation where governments are paying twice," she said, noting that states are increasing spending on nature and climate while simultaneously damaging it. Little progress was made on the Cali Fund, a voluntary funding pot for private companies that profit from genetic material harvested from the environment. It had been estimated the fund could raise up to $3.6bn annually, but only $10,000 had been pledged at the start of the meeting. Bennett said the fund's voluntary nature made it difficult to pressure companies, and argued that communities in biodiversity-rich countries should be paid when businesses profit from their genetic resources. Approval of scientific reports on the state of nature, seen as one of the easier agenda items, was reportedly frustrated by a small group of countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia. "The attacks on science have bothered me a lot," French Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut was reported as saying by the AFP news agency. Attention now turns to next month's annual climate conference, COP31, whose science body the IPCC has faced similar challenges in recent weeks over passing reports and securing funding. "This is such a blatant political move... and the IPCC is no such place for such political manoeuvring since the outputs are in humanity's interest," said Prof David Lee of the University of Manchester, who has worked on previous reports.