Nearly three years after a landmark international agreement was forged to halt the destruction of the natural world, a significant majority of countries have finally stepped forward with formal strategies to protect biodiversity. According to new analysis from Carbon Brief, approximately 58% of nations worldwide have now met a United Nations call to submit updated national pledges aimed at addressing severe nature loss.
The milestone comes just ahead of the upcoming COP17 biodiversity summit, scheduled to kick off next week in Yerevan, Armenia. As delegates prepare to gather in the Caucasus nation, the meeting marks the official halfway point of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). This sweeping pact, agreed upon during the COP15 summit in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022, established a bold overarching mission to halt and reverse the decline of global biodiversity by the year 2030.
The journey toward gathering these critical national plans has faced notable hurdles. Under the original timelines established during the creation of the GBF, countries were asked to submit their updated national biodiversity strategies and action plans—collectively known as NBSAPs—by the start of the COP16 biodiversity summit, which took place in October 2024. However, that initial deadline saw a sluggish response, with a mere 15% of nations managing to cross the finish line on time.
Faced with widespread delays, negotiators at the Cali summit agreed to adopt a new text that urged governments to release their respective NBSAPs as soon as possible. Progress has steadily picked up speed in the months since. Carbon Brief’s latest evaluation shows that 113 countries have now officially published new NBSAPs. This represents a substantial jump from the 55 nations that had complied just a year prior, translating to a current compliance rate of 58% among the 196 parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
The upcoming summit in Yerevan will provide the global community with its first comprehensive, formal review of progress toward meeting the 2030 targets outlined in the Montreal framework. The GBF contains an expansive list of 23 specific targets covering diverse environmental priorities, ranging from restoring degraded ecosystems and mitigating the impacts of climate change to mobilizing adequate financial resources for developing nations to help offset the costs of conservation.
To prepare for this critical stocktake, the UN has coordinated a comprehensive global progress report. This document synthesizes information drawn directly from the newly submitted NBSAPs, individual national targets, and the seventh national reports that countries were required to submit to the international body by February of this year. While only about half of the world’s nations managed to meet that early reporting deadline, compliance has since climbed to roughly 73%.
Geographically, the momentum behind the updated NBSAPs has been driven in large part by significant engagement across Africa and South America. Over the past year, a wave of African nations has successfully published their updated strategies. This list includes Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Similar strides have been made across South America. Notably, Brazil—widely recognized as the most biodiverse nation on Earth—has released its new NBSAP, joining regional neighbors Belize and Chile in fulfilling the commitment. Meanwhile, the host nation for the upcoming COP17 negotiations, Armenia, officially published its strategy in April, setting the stage for international delegates arriving in Yerevan.
Despite these encouraging gains, significant gaps remain in the global architecture designed to protect ecosystems. Under the operational rules of the GBF and its associated protocols, countries that found themselves unable to complete a full NBSAP ahead of the earlier deadlines were requested to submit standalone national targets instead. Unlike comprehensive action plans, these targets outline specific environmental goals without necessarily detailing the precise policy mechanisms or implementation pathways required to achieve them.
When COP16 concluded, roughly 119 parties had produced at least one national target. That figure has since risen to 175, meaning that about 89% of countries have at least established formal targets, even if comprehensive strategy documents remain outstanding in some cases.
Crucially, however, several major global players—including some of the world’s most ecologically significant regions—have yet to finalize or publish new NBSAPs. Four of the planet’s recognized megadiverse nations, which together harbor a vast majority of Earth’s species, have not yet released updated plans. These holdouts include Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, and the United States.
The absence of the United States remains a unique structural challenge within international environmental diplomacy, as it is the sole UN member country that is not a formal signatory to the underlying UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Additionally, Russia, which encompasses the largest land area of any country on Earth, has also failed to produce a new NBSAP under the framework.
Throughout the process of drafting these strategies, numerous developing countries have voiced persistent concerns regarding financial constraints. Many governments have argued that a lack of adequate funding, technical capacity, and institutional resources has created severe bottlenecks, preventing them from completing and publishing their NBSAPs on schedule.
To address these barriers, multilateral funding mechanisms have worked to disburse assistance. According to representatives from the Global Environment Facility, the primary multilateral fund tasked with supporting the preparation of NBSAPs, financial channels have been actively utilized. The GEF previously reported that out of 139 developing countries that requested financial support following COP16, 120 had successfully accessed the necessary funds. Furthermore, the UN Environment Programme has continued working to resolve administrative and technical issues for the remaining small group of nations attempting to unlock financial assistance.
As the international community prepares to convene in Armenia, the focus will now shift to whether the newly submitted strategies, targets, and financial commitments are robust enough to change the trajectory of global biodiversity loss before the critical 2030 deadline arrives.
