The world spends 30 times more money destroying nature than protecting it, the head of the UN's biodiversity convention warned this week, as African and global negotiators wrapped up a key scientific review in Nairobi and turned to the harder question of how to pay for saving what's left.
"The most worrying issue of all is that the world keeps bankrolling this destruction of nature," said Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), speaking as the 28th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-28) closed at UNEP headquarters. The Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-7) has now taken its place, running through 12 August.
Schomaker said Africa sits at the centre of the crisis. The continent hosts a quarter of the world's biodiversity, she noted, while facing some of the sharpest climate impacts and the fewest financial and technological resources to respond.
From Science to Funding
SBSTTA-28, which ran 27 July to 1 August, focused on reviewing the science: what's working in biodiversity conservation, what isn't, and why. SBI-7 has shifted to the practical barriers countries face in acting on that evidence — chiefly, resource mobilization. Negotiators are now working through how to embed biodiversity into national decision-making, draw financial institutions into the conversation, and raise the money needed to close the gap.
The first-ever global progress report on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, compiled from submissions by 125 countries, found strong global engagement and innovation across the framework's 23 targets — but also persistent shortfalls in financing, capacity-building, and technology transfer, particularly in developing countries.
"We now have a very solid understanding of where we are," Schomaker said, describing the report as the evidence base for decisions ahead of COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, this October. "What stands out this time is the global review... taking that into account and determining how we can move forward."
The 2030 and 2050 Targets
Adopted by 196 countries in 2022, the Kunming-Montreal framework sets 23 action-oriented targets for 2030, feeding into four broader goals for 2050: halting human-driven extinction, sustainably managing nature's contributions to people, fairly sharing benefits from genetic resources, and closing the biodiversity finance gap — especially for developing nations.
Schomaker said the next four years are about turning commitments into lasting practice. "The next four years are building on this national and global alignment to now accelerate implementation of those plans," she said.
What's Next
All outcomes from the Nairobi meetings feed directly into COP17, set for 19–30 October in Yerevan, where Parties will take stock of the framework's first full review and assess the gap between targets and delivery.
Despite the financing shortfall, Schomaker pointed to growing momentum: governments and businesses are increasingly factoring nature into their decisions, and public conversation on biodiversity loss is more open than before.
