Global nature talks reach deal but money remains an issue

Global nature negotiations end in agreement, but funding is still unresolved

Elephants in Southern Africa are among the species that have bounced back following recent conservation work

In Armenia’s capital this week, a clash erupted between politicians — not the widely shared mass fight in its parliament — but among delegates from almost 200 countries.

For nearly two weeks, the world’s nations have been meeting in Yerevan, negotiating and disputing a new deal on nature.

In the early hours of Saturday, several hours after the talks were supposed to conclude, they finally settled the main elements of a new action plan.

“And that’s it. Perfect,” said the meeting president, Hambardzum Matevosyan.

Four years ago, those same countries had approved a historic agreement pledging to “halt and reverse” nature’s decline.

That 2022 global pact — the Global Biodiversity Framework — included 24 targets, among them protecting 30% of the world’s land and seas by the end of the decade.

They agreed that urgent action was needed.

Scientists say the planet is now in a sixth mass extinction event, with species disappearing at 100 times the natural rate because of human activity.

But according to the UN this week, external the world is on course to meet only one of those two dozen targets.

As part of this week’s agreement, countries admitted they were lagging behind.

“While not particularly exciting or detailed, it’s good news that countries could reach agreement,” said Catherine Weller, from 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, echoed that view, telling BBC News: “We are still seeing an appalling loss, threatening the collapse of ecosystems globally. We run out of words really about how serious this is.”

But he added: “the better news is there are so many examples worldwide about how... to turn things around”.

Countries have placed 623 million acres (252m hectares) of degraded land under protection — an area larger than Greenland.

Just last month, the WWF praised conservation work that had led to the recovery of key species including elephants, green sea turtles and tigers.

Countries have accepted that the biggest obstacle to speeding up those efforts is money.

In 2022, they agreed to provide $30bn (£22.4bn) for nature recovery by the end of the decade, and to mobilise another $170bn from private sources.

But years later, many countries have been shifting international aid toward defence spending and to cope with repeated energy shocks, meaning pledges are not being made at the pace needed to meet those goals, according to the UN.

At this meeting, more than $1bn was pledged, with half of it coming from philanthropists including Leonardo DiCaprio’s Re:wild organisation.

Genetic material taken from animals such as the Gila monster has produced life-saving medicines

Anna Ducros, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said there had been some progress on countries agreeing to cut subsidies for industries that harm the environment.

“A concrete example is that governments subsidise large-scale fishing that is especially harmful for nature - for example, trawling.”

Ducros, who attended the talks, added: “Right now, we have the situation where governments are paying twice.

“So they know that they need to increase spending on nature and climate, but at the same time, they’re damaging nature.”

A dedicated funding mechanism, the Cali Fund, was previously created for private companies that benefit from using genetic material found in nature to contribute to. It was estimated that as much as $3.6bn could be raised each year — but at the start of the meeting only $10,000 had been pledged.

There was little movement on that matter, and Bennett acknowledged that its voluntary setup makes it hard to pressure companies.

“When you have countries that have rich biodiversity in them and you have companies trying to make money out of the genetic material found in those countries they should be paying those communities,” he said. “That should not be controversial.”

One of the simpler items on the agenda was supposed to be the approval of scientific reports on the state of nature.

But a small group of countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, were reported to have obstructed that process.

“The attacks on science have bothered me a lot,” French Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut was reported as saying by the AFP news agency.

Next month, countries will meet for the annual climate conference — COP31. Its own science body, the IPCC, has faced similar difficulties in the past month in getting its scientific reports approved 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, from Manchester University, who has worked on previous reports.