With just four years left to the2030 deadline, global biodiversity negotiations are seeking to move beyond promises and addressing implementation and international finance. From 19 to 30 October, the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are meeting in Yerevan, Armenia, for COP17. For the first time, they are taking stock of the progress on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022 and structured around 23 targets.
The outlook is worrying: according to the CBD's global report State of Biodiversity Action, progress towards the targets of the framework remains insufficient. The European Union, leader in environmental legislation and among the world’s major donors, has a mixed record. While it provides substantial funding for nature abroad, conservation programs at home, including the Nature Restoration Regulation, often lack dedicated resources.
Biodiversity policies and an €18.7 billion annual shortfall
A new report, The Cost of Biodiversity Inaction: what it means for the EU economy, drafted by consultancy Eunomia for EuroNatur, examines how much the EU is spending on biodiversity policies and how much more funding is needed. Based on an assessment of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the report estimates that meeting its 41 objectives would require around €48.2 billion a year. Yet, expected expenditure comes to just €29.5 billion, with private sources contributing only €0.4 billion, leaving an annual shortfall of €18.7 billion.
Other estimates of the funding gap range between €2.8 billion, according to the Commission’s Joint Research Centre, and €37.4 billion, according to the Commission’s Environmental Implementation Review. Such a wide range reflects differences in what is included and how the figures are calculated. Analysing spending data, the report finds that a share of the money the EU classifies as biodiversity financing is planned rather than being actually spent. Moreover, some projects are too easily included, and the same money can be double-counted when EU and national funding are combined. In addition, the report underlines that five countries alone account for three-quarters of the reported national spending. In sum, even the €18.7 billion shortfall may underestimate how much money is really missing.
The study computes the potential benefits provided by investing in biodiversity policies. It states that every euro invested in nature could return up to eight; applied to the funding gap, this ratio would mean around €150 billion a year in benefits. Investment on this scale would increase employment, directly and indirectly, and could provide roughly 560.000 jobs.
“For a long time, it was said that there was a little business case for investing in nature," says Marije Schaafsma, associate professor and head of the Environmental Economics research department at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije University Amsterdam. "I think that these figures help in making a case for generating more investment in nature. The investments in restoration will take a long time to pay off and that requires certain funding structures, not only from governments but also from financial institutions”.
The burden of harmful subsidies
The biodiversity funding gap is driven also by harmful subsidies and investments that damage nature. Citing a WWF analysis, the EuroNatur report estimates that between €34.4 and 48.9 billion in annual EU budget spending may be harmful to biodiversity. This is more than twice the abovementioned financial gap. Around 60% of the funding of the Common Agricultural Policy falls into that category.
“To close the biodiversity financial gap, abolishing or reducing harmful subsidies would be a great step”, underlines Schaafsma. “The second lever is pricing, since many of the polluting industries do not pay for the harm they do to nature, whether that's through emissions or other environmental impacts”. Measures of this kind, she notes, “seem to cover many more ministries and policy domains than only nature restoration”. The sectors most directly involved are agriculture, energy, manufacturing and transport, rather than the environment alone.
The tools are available, but the political direction is not completely encouraging. The Commission’s report on funding needs for the Nature Restoration Regulation has not yet been presented, and a preliminary estimate already indicates a shortfall. The proposed 2028-2034 EU budget incorporates biodiversity into a broad 35% spending target for climate and environment, and ends LIFE as a standalone programme. By contrast, EuroNatur asks for specific biodiversity sub-targets and a applying a "do no significant harm" check on new spending. Ina Lehmann, assistant professor of governance of global biodiversity at Vrije University, points out that the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 sets specific targets only through that year, leaving what happens afterward as an open question.
The EU's position in Yerevan
On 12 October, a week before COP17, the Council of the EU approved its conclusions ahead of the Yerevan summit, summarized in 63 paragraphs. The Council acknowledges that the 2030 targets cannot be met without a significant acceleration in implementation, and that national targets still fail to tackle the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. It presents the Nature Restoration Regulation as an important European contribution and admits that it remains unclear whether the 2025 finance milestone under Target 19 was met.
Biodiversity finance and implementation are also at the heart of COP17. “In particular there is attention for the first Global Stocktake report, whose message is that progress has been made, but the world is far from meeting the 2030 targets”, underlines Lehmann. “The challenge is how to speed up implementation and what means of implementation are needed”. Reform of the CBD's financial mechanism and the Cali Fund for digital sequence information are hot topics, she adds. Meanwhile, protecting 30% of land and sea is now mostly a matter of implementation rather than a top agenda item.
Europe's credibility put to the test
International finance is the topic where Europe stands on firmest ground, and where it can showcase a strong track record during COP17.The EU and its member states are collectively the largest providers of biodiversity aid by far. The Council highlights OECD figures showing that international biodiversity-specific finance rose to USD18.9 billion in 2024. The Council backs the Global Environment Facility (GEF), stresses the need for having more countries to contribute international biodiversity finance, and it is looking at new tools such as "high-integrity" nature credits. Moreover, it supports the Cali Fund for Digital Sequence Information, and expresses concern for the low number of contributions, while emphasizing that the data must remain freely accessible and that its use must not be tracked.
The Council conclusions do not explain how the EU intends to address the shortcomings in its own policies highlighted by the EuroNatur report. The Council calls on other countries to reform harmful subsidies in line with Target 18, but does not say what the EU will do about its own. It recognizes the importance of the Nature Restoration Regulation without clarifying how it will be funded. It wants to bring the private sector onboard, while private investments accounts for just 1.4% of EU biodiversity spending.
“The EU is a key actor at the negotiations, and it has made some progress on policies” adds Lehmann. “In Yerevan the highly biodiverse countries, from Brazil to Indonesia and some African States, are particularly engaged in the negotiations asking for more funding from European and other donor countries”.
The negotiations in Yerevan are testing whether Europe can match the message it promotes internationally with its domestic policy choices. As the largest donor, it has the standing to ask others for more. But the EuroNatur report suggests the most effective step may lie within its own budget, namely by scrapping tackling harmful subsidies and increasing the funding to the Nature Restoration Regulation.
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