Developed countries are "falling far short" of the finance needed to meet the United Nations' global nature targets, according to a major stocktaking report released ahead of the COP17 biodiversity summit. With negotiations due to begin on 19 October in Yerevan, Armenia, the shortfall in money for nature is set to be the most fiercely contested issue on the table — and a potential breaking point for the landmark deal struck four years ago.
What COP17 is, and what's at stake
COP17 is the 17th meeting of the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the treaty that governs global efforts to halt and reverse the loss of nature. This year's summit is the first formal "global stocktake" of progress since 196 countries agreed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15 in 2022 — an ambitious deal to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
At the heart of the framework sits Goal D, which commits countries to closing a $700bn-per-year "biodiversity finance gap" by 2030. That figure has two components. Target 18 calls on countries to identify harmful subsidies by 2025 and progressively eliminate, phase out or reform them, reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030. Target 19 requires countries to "substantially and progressively increase" financial resources for nature to at least $200bn per year by 2030 — from national budgets, multilateral development banks and the private sector.
Crucially, Target 19 also contains a specific obligation for wealthy nations: at least $20bn per year by 2025, rising to at least $30bn per year by 2030, in public biodiversity funding provided to developing countries. It is against these yardsticks that the new stocktaking report delivers its damning verdict.
The numbers: how far short the world is falling
The global stocktaking report, prepared by the CBD secretariat and published on 10 September, finds that between 2020 and 2023 countries mobilised a cumulative total of just $186.4bn toward the $200bn-per-year goal — an average of less than $50bn a year. While the report cautions that it is "still too early to draw any conclusions", it states plainly that this total "falls far short" of what is needed.
The specific 2025 milestone looks equally bleak. The report concludes that raising "at least $20bn per year by 2025" in public finance from developed to developing countries was "likely not achieved". The hard numbers back that up: reporting countries raised a cumulative total of just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity across the four years from 2020 to 2023 — an average of only $4.4bn per year, less than a quarter of the annual target.
An accompanying report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tells the same story from a different angle. It estimates that global biodiversity finance reached $74.9bn to $92.4bn per year between 2023 and 2025, with international public finance contributing around $16.1bn per year on average — nearly $4bn below the 2025 goal. Worse, only $7.9bn in 2023 and $8.5bn in 2024 was genuinely "biodiversity-specific" funding; the rest was money for other priorities in which nature was merely a secondary aim.
The faltering funds: GBFF and the Cali Fund
Two flagship financing mechanisms are stumbling badly. The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), established at COP15 in 2022 and housed under the Global Environment Facility, was meant to be a central channel for wealthy nations' contributions. After an initial flurry of pledges ahead of COP16 in 2024, new money has all but dried up: developed nations had contributed less than $400m in signed commitments as of mid-2026 — $387.2m from 11 countries and one subnational government, Quebec in Canada, over nearly three years.
The Cali Fund, created at the COP16 nature negotiations in Colombia in 2024, has fared even worse. It was hailed as a landmark: the first-ever global fund requiring companies that profit from genetic data — the digital DNA sequences used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and agriculture — to contribute to conservation. A working paper from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics estimates that if all 21,690 eligible firms paid their share, the fund could raise $3.6bn a year for nature, or $929m a year under a "realistic" uptake scenario.
To date, the Cali Fund has received just two contributions, totalling $6,000 — six thousand dollars against a realistic target of nearly a billion. A non-profit watchdog initiative, Cali Watch, finds that not a single government has passed a law requiring companies to contribute, and estimates that eight companies alone should be paying more than $2bn between them in what it calls their "Cali debt".
Why developing countries are furious
For developing nations — which hold most of the world's biodiversity and bear the greater burden of implementing the nature targets — the finance gap is not an abstract accounting exercise. As Lim Li Ching of the Third World Network told Carbon Brief, the need for financing is "very real", and developed countries have "regrettably not met their legal obligations". She warned that the failure "should not be used as an excuse to pivot to the private sector or market-based mechanisms, which struggle to raise finance at scale and often deepen social and ecological harm."
The scepticism toward private finance is well founded. Options such as debt-for-nature swaps, biodiversity offsets and carbon credits are harder to monitor than public money and have repeatedly faced criticism over their environmental and social impacts. Carbon credits in particular trade on markets where verification standards vary widely, and critics argue they allow polluters to buy their way out of real change.
Dr Siva Thambisetty, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics, put the private sector's inertia bluntly: companies are "minimising outgoings and liability and maximising freedom to operate", and the shift needed "cannot be generated internally by businesses alone without outside pressure. States with jurisdiction over business need to take action."
What this means for the Amazon and global biodiversity
The stakes of the finance fight extend far beyond the negotiating halls of Yerevan. Scientists warn that the Amazon rainforest — the world's largest tropical forest and a linchpin of the global climate system — is approaching tipping points where deforestation and drought could flip vast areas into savannah. Protecting it, and the other great reservoirs of biodiversity in the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia, requires money to flow to the countries and communities doing the protecting.
That is why the question of who pays, and how the money reaches the ground, matters as much as the headline sums. Dr June Rubis, the Indigenous peoples and local communities lead on the Cali Fund's steering committee, told Carbon Brief she was "worried about the pace" of biodiversity finance — and added that "headline commitments matter, but so do the pathways through which money reaches people." Indigenous peoples steward an estimated 80 per cent of the world's remaining biodiversity, yet vanishingly little finance reaches them directly.
With species extinction rates running tens to hundreds of times above the natural background rate, the 2030 deadline in the Kunming-Montreal framework is not a distant aspiration but an imminent test. The stocktake at COP17 will tell the world whether the most ambitious nature deal in history is on track — or whether, as the numbers suggest, it is already slipping away for want of money.
FAQs
What is COP17 and when does it take place?
COP17 is the 17th conference of the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the treaty governing global nature protection. It begins on 19 October in Yerevan, Armenia, and is the first summit to formally stocktake progress since the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was agreed at COP15 in 2022. Finance for nature is expected to be the most contentious issue, with developing countries demanding wealthy nations honour their funding commitments.
What are the UN's 2030 nature finance targets?
The Kunming-Montreal framework's Goal D commits countries to closing a $700bn-per-year biodiversity finance gap by 2030. This breaks down into two targets: Target 18 requires cutting at least $500bn per year in nature-harming subsidies by 2030, and Target 19 requires mobilising at least $200bn per year for biodiversity from all sources. Target 19 also obliges developed countries to provide at least $20bn per year by 2025 — rising to $30bn by 2030 — in public funding to developing nations. The stocktaking report finds the world far short on all counts.
How far short is nature finance falling?
Between 2020 and 2023, countries mobilised a cumulative $186.4bn toward the $200bn-per-year goal — under $50bn a year on average. International public funding from developed to developing countries totalled just $17.7bn over those four years, about $4.4bn a year against the $20bn annual target for 2025. The OECD puts global biodiversity finance at $74.9bn to $92.4bn a year in 2023-25, with only around $8bn a year genuinely biodiversity-specific. The dedicated Global Biodiversity Framework Fund has received under $400m since 2023, and the corporate Cali Fund just $6,000.
What is the Cali Fund and why has it failed so far?
The Cali Fund, created at COP16 in Colombia in 2024, is the first global fund asking companies that profit from genetic data — digital DNA sequences used in drugs, cosmetics and seeds — to pay into conservation. Under a realistic uptake scenario it could raise $929m a year, but it has received only two contributions totalling $6,000 because contributions are voluntary and no government has legislated to require them. A watchdog initiative estimates eight companies alone owe more than $2bn. Experts say states must create legal obligations for firms to pay, rather than relying on goodwill.
Why does nature finance matter for the Amazon?
The Amazon, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia's forests hold a huge share of the planet's biodiversity and regulate the global climate — yet the countries protecting them are often the poorest. Without international finance, the economic pressure to log, mine and farm these landscapes overwhelms conservation. Scientists warn parts of the Amazon are nearing tipping points where forest could flip to savannah. Money is also needed to reach Indigenous peoples and local communities, who steward most remaining biodiversity but receive almost none of the funding directly.
🤖 This article was rewritten by Feed and Figures' editorial AI from a report originally published by Carbon Brief. Facts and quotes are preserved from the original; the rewrite focuses on clarity and structure. For the unedited original, see the source link below.
