More than two years after the original deadline, approximately 58% of the world’s countries have successfully met a United Nations call to submit updated national strategies for halting and reversing biodiversity loss, according to a recent analysis by Carbon Brief.
The renewed pledges, formally known as National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), were originally requested by the start of the COP16 biodiversity summit held in Cali, Colombia, in October 2024. However, after a sluggish start that saw a mere 15% of nations meet the initial cutoff, international momentum stalled, forcing delegates at the summit to adopt a softer diplomatic compromise. Negotiators agreed on a revised text that merely "urged" governments to release their detailed action plans as soon as possible.
That diplomatic push appears to have yielded gradual results. Carbon Brief’s updated tracking reveals that 113 countries have now officially come forward with comprehensive NBSAPs. This represents a significant upward trend from the 55 nations that had completed their paperwork just a year prior.
The milestone comes as government representatives, environmental ministers, and civil society observers prepare to travel to Yerevan, Armenia, for the upcoming COP17 biodiversity summit. The upcoming gathering marks a critical juncture for international environmental policy, serving as the official halfway point of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Adopted as a landmark agreement in Montreal in December 2022, the GBF established an overarching mission to halt and reverse the alarming decline of global nature by the end of the decade.
Global Review in Yerevan
As delegates assemble in Armenia for COP17, the summit will provide the international community with its first formal stage to conduct a comprehensive global review of collective progress toward the objectives outlined in the 2022 framework.
When nearly every country in the world signed onto the GBF in Montreal, they committed to an ambitious framework containing 23 specific targets designed for 2030. These targets cover a remarkably expansive spectrum of ecological priorities, ranging from the large-scale restoration of degraded ecosystems and the mitigation of climate change impacts to the provision of adequate international finance to help developing nations shoulder the costs of safeguarding natural habitats.
Crucially, the architecture of the GBF included a stringent schedule for monitoring accountability. This mechanism mandated the preparation of a consolidated global progress report coordinated by the United Nations. This UN synthesis draws directly from the official NBSAPs, the individual national targets submitted by governments, and the seventh national reports that countries were expected to submit to the UN earlier this year.
Carbon Brief’s analysis indicates that the pool of compliant nations has grown steadily. Out of 196 parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, 113 have now fulfilled their obligation to produce a new NBSAP. While a 58% completion rate demonstrates considerable progress since the dark days of COP16—where only a fraction of countries had met their legal expectations—it also underscores that a substantial minority of nations are still lagging behind as the 2030 deadline draws closer.
Regional Progress and Megadiverse Gaps
Geographically, the distribution of newly submitted NBSAPs reveals encouraging momentum across several developing regions, offset by notable absences among some of the world’s most ecologically critical territories.
Over the past year, a substantial wave of African nations has published their updated strategies. Among the countries that have finalized and released their plans are 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.
South America has also seen key additions to the global fold. Brazil—recognized globally as the most biodiverse nation on Earth—has published its new biodiversity pledge alongside neighboring Belize and Chile. Meanwhile, COP17 host nation Armenia released its own updated national strategy in April, setting the stage for its diplomatic leadership role at the upcoming summit.
Under the rules established by the GBF and its supporting decisions, countries that were initially unable to complete full NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were permitted an interim option: submitting standalone national targets. Unlike exhaustive NBSAPs, which include implementation frameworks, budgets, and operational roadmaps, national targets simply enumerate the specific biodiversity goals a government intends to pursue without necessarily detailing the mechanics of how they will be achieved.
Despite these flexible pathways, several of the world’s designated "megadiverse" nations—countries that harbor the vast majority of Earth’s biological species—have yet to publish new NBSAPs. This group includes Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, and the United States. The United States occupies a unique legal position within global environmental governance as the sole UN member country that is not a signatory to the underlying UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Additionally, Russia, which encompasses the largest land area on the planet, has similarly failed to produce a new NBSAP.
Even with gaps in comprehensive action plans, broader participation metrics show upward movement. By the conclusion of COP16, roughly 119 parties had produced at least one formal national target. Over the subsequent two years, that figure has climbed to 175, encompassing approximately 89% of all countries. Furthermore, while only about half of all nations met the initial deadline to submit their seventh national reports by February of this year, compliance for that reporting requirement has since risen to 73%.
Financial Constraints and Institutional Support
Throughout the prolonged rollout of these strategies, a recurring friction point has been the availability of financial and technical resources. Over the past two years, numerous developing countries have repeatedly voiced concerns that severe budgetary constraints, institutional capacity limits, and a lack of predictable international funding have directly hindered their ability to finalize and publish comprehensive NBSAPs.
To alleviate these pressures, multilateral funding mechanisms have attempted to streamline access to emergency preparation grants. Representatives from the Global Environment Facility (GEF)—the primary multilateral fund tasked with supporting developing nations in drafting their biodiversity plans—reported that out of 139 countries requesting financial assistance since the conclusion of COP16, 120 had successfully accessed the necessary funds.
Furthermore, officials from the UN Environment Programme have indicated that international agencies are actively working to resolve outstanding administrative and technical hurdles to ensure that the remaining 19 countries can secure the financial assistance required to complete their national frameworks. As the international community prepares for the debates and diplomatic negotiations in Yerevan, the success of these funding pipelines and the accountability of nations will form the core of the global stocktake on nature.
