COP17 Opens With African States Facing Unmet Biodiversity Pledges

African governments arrived at the 17th summit of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity in Yerevan, Armenia, facing an uncomfortable ledger. The summit opened Oct. 19 and runs through Oct. 30. Binding commitments made in 2022 remain largely unmet, the finance promised to deliver them has fallen short, and the oversight mechanisms meant to track progress are flagging serious shortfalls.

The summit marks the halfway point to the deadlines attached to the first set of 23 action-oriented global targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework. The accountability picture is bleak. Fewer than half of countries report being on track to meet their self-designed biodiversity targets, and the U.N.’s own State of Biodiversity Action report, released alongside the summit, records that critical elements of progress, including finance, capacity, cooperation and data, are still missing. “The report shows that many of the critical elements of progress, including finance, capacity, cooperation and data, are still missing in action,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a press release accompanying the report.

Additional reference context is available at https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/finance-and-indigenous-rights-top-africans-agenda-as-biodiversity-summit-opens-in-yerevan/.

Compliance failures are concentrated among the countries with the most at stake. Three of the world’s 17 “megadiverse” countries, each home to at least 5,000 endemic plant species, are African: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and South Africa. None of the three met the initial 2024 deadline for submitting a national biodiversity strategy under the framework. South Africa still has not filed an action plan.

The framework’s headline commitment, to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and water by 2030, is behind schedule, and the gap is widest on the continent where biodiversity is most concentrated. Roughly 15 percent more of Africa’s terrestrial and marine territory would need to come under protection to meet the target. For governments already juggling competing priorities on limited budgets, the question of who pays is central.

The financing record gives them grounds for complaint. At the most recent oceans conference, held in Mombasa, Kenya, in June, a review of funding pledged to protect Africa’s oceans since 2014 found that $14.3 billion had been promised but only $5.8 billion delivered. African delegations also point to the $20 billion in annual public international finance that was supposed to flow from Global North to Global South countries by 2025, and which has not materialized. The OECD reports that biodiversity funding from international public sources rose 94 percent between 2018-2020 and 2023-2025, reaching just over $16 billion a year, but total spending across public and private streams stands at between $75 and $92 billion annually, well short of the framework’s target of $200 billion a year by 2030.

Harmful subsidies compound the problem. An estimated $2 trillion a year goes to activities that damage the environment, and although the framework includes a target to reduce this by $500 billion a year by 2030, a 2025 deadline for merely identifying harmful incentives was missed. According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, fewer than half of CBD parties have even mentioned subsidy reduction in their self-reporting.

Against this backdrop, questions of finance and Indigenous rights dominate the African agenda at the summit’s opening.

Accountability extends beyond money to how protection is carried out. The U.N. report concedes that the framework’s goals cannot be achieved by government action alone and calls for meaningful recognition of the rights of women, youth and Indigenous peoples in planning, implementing and monitoring progress. Advocates in Yerevan are pressing for Indigenous peoples and local communities to be recognized as rights-holders rather than mere stakeholders. Their concerns have a documented basis. Stefania Carrer, a litigation and advocacy officer at Minority Rights Group, told Mongabay in 2024 that protected areas worldwide have led to widespread evictions, hunger, ill health and human rights violations, and warned that the push toward the 30 by 30 target could multiply fortress conservation projects. The Cali COP took place as Indigenous Maasai faced violent eviction from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and last month the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination repeated its calls to end the evictions and restore rights and access.

Meanwhile, some institutional alternatives are gaining traction. OECMs, or other effective area-based conservation measures, now account for around 5 percent of protected areas worldwide and allow sustainable fishing, forestry and agriculture within areas counted toward the 30 by 30 tally. The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity is pushing for the framework to recognize Indigenous and Traditional Territories as a separate pathway, opening the way for funding to flow directly to Indigenous communities. Resson Kantai Duff, portfolio funding director at U.S.-based nonprofit Maliasili, told Mongabay in 2023 that multilateral environmental agreements increasingly recognize the pivotal role of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and her organization’s report on partnerships between big international NGOs and African local organizations found leaders describing collaborations that hold them back and calling for greater local power.

Evidence from the continent suggests well-planned expansion can work. Marine protected areas established by the Tanzanian government in the 1990s have helped nearby villagers diversify income and raise living standards, while in Kenya, where more than half of large mammals live outside national parks and reserves, community-led and private conservancies have grown. But as Guterres put it, “Nature won’t thrive on good intentions.”