Can countries deliver on a deal to save the world’s plants and animals? — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- António Guterres warned on the eve of COP17 in Yerevan that "the war on nature has not ended," urging governments to scrap environmentally harmful subsidies and calling fossil fuel support "subsidising suicide."
- The UK is on track to meet just three of the 23 biodiversity targets it committed to under the 2022 Montreal agreement, having weakened biodiversity net gain rules, slashed rainforest protection funding, rejected a bottom-trawling ban in marine protected areas, and not designated any new sites of special scientific interest since 2023.
- Donald Trump's second presidency has triggered "brutal cuts" to USAID and other agencies, with funding evaporating overnight for conservation projects from Galápagos illegal fishing patrols to restoration of Gorongosa national park in Mozambique.
- The EU's flagship nature restoration law — the centrepiece of the 2022 deal — was substantially watered down after bitter opposition from the rightwing European parliament bloc over its impact on agriculture, while Dutch farmer protests against EU nitrogen rules have inflamed the politics further.
- The UK cut Darwin Initiative eligibility for at least 89 countries earlier this year, and a digital biodiversity fund meant to raise hundreds of millions from commercial users of nature-based data has so far raised just $6,000.
- Kazakhstan and French Polynesia have used the agreement to drive progress — bringing back the Caspian tiger and establishing huge new marine parks — and an estimate suggests countries could come close to meeting the land portion of the 30x30 protection target.
- Steve Reed declared "the UK is back on the international stage on nature" on taking office, but Conservation International's Jonathan Hall said the reinstated £6bn climate aid package — roughly £1.5bn for nature — must now come with transparency to be effective.
Why it matters: With no UN biodiversity target ever met since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, COP17 is confronting a delivery crisis on the Montreal deal's 23 targets. The UK's projected three-of-23 performance, Trump's USAID cuts to projects from the Galápagos to Mozambique, and the UK cutting Darwin Initiative funding for 89 countries are shrinking the $30bn-a-year biodiversity finance pipeline that conservationists say must be filled to avert ecosystem collapse flagged as a national security risk.
Ask SkimNews
