5 Things Worth Watching at COP17 This Week

If you work in conservation, community organising, or biodiversity finance, is COP17 on your radar? Do you know which decisions could change your funding between now and 2030? And are you sure the communities you work with will feel any of it?

Here’s the truth: COP17 isn’t background noise. It’s the negotiation that will shape your working environment for the rest of this decade.

We’re one week into the two-week meeting in Yerevan. The first days are usually about setting positions. The second week is where the real deals get made. So now is the perfect time to know what to watch.

Here are five things I’m tracking.

1. The global review

This is the first formal check on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework since it was agreed in 2022. Twenty-three targets. Four years in. Four years to go.

What to watch: the gap between what’s been pledged and what’s actually been delivered.

Many countries have updated their national biodiversity plans. That’s progress. But a plan on paper isn’t a forest on the ground. The real question is whether the review is honest about where things are falling short, or whether it gets softened into diplomatic language that hides the gaps.

An honest report card is uncomfortable. It’s also the only kind that helps.

2. Finance

Money is where good intentions meet reality.

The framework commits the world to mobilising at least $200 billion a year for biodiversity by 2030, from all sources: public, private, domestic and international. Within that, developed countries promised at least $20 billion a year to developing countries by 2025, rising to $30 billion by 2030.

What to watch: two things.

First, did the 2025 milestone of $20 billion a year actually happen? That deadline has passed. The review should tell us.

Second, is money reaching implementers, or stalling at the top? For anyone working on the ground in Kenya, the question isn’t just “how much?” It’s “how quickly, through which channels, and with how much paperwork?” Funding that takes three years to reach a community conservancy isn’t really funding. It’s a promise.

3. The Cali Fund

Agreed at the last COP, the Cali Fund is built on a simple idea of fairness.

When companies use genetic information from plants, animals or microbes, often stored as digital data, to develop medicines, cosmetics or crops, some of the profit should flow back to the countries and communities that protected that biodiversity in the first place.

What to watch: who gets access, and how fast.

A fund like this can be transformative. Or it can sit mostly empty while the companies that should contribute wait to see who else does. The details being negotiated now will decide which.

4. Indigenous peoples and local communities

This is the one closest to my heart.

Indigenous peoples and local communities look after a huge share of the land that matters most for biodiversity. Yet for decades, they’ve been consulted at best and ignored at worst.

What to watch: rights, real participation and direct funding. Not just consultation.

There’s a big difference between being asked your opinion and being given decision-making power. There’s an even bigger difference between money that flows to a community organisation and money that flows through five intermediaries first, losing a slice at every step.

5. How “30×30” gets delivered

The target to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 is the headline number of the entire framework. It’s also the one with the most potential to go wrong.

What to watch: whether protected areas expand with communities, not around them or over them.

Here in Kenya, we know this story well. Conservation that pushes people off their land creates resentment that can last generations. Conservation that partners with communities, through conservancies, shared benefits and local jobs, can last generations too, for better reasons.

The number matters less than the method.

Why this matters so much for Kenya

Do you know how much of Kenya’s wildlife lives outside national parks and reserves? A large share of it. Elephants, lions, giraffes and countless other species spend much of their lives on community land, private ranches and farms.

That means our conservation future doesn’t just depend on rangers inside park fences. It depends on the communities living beyond them. On whether they benefit from wildlife or only bear its costs.

So every decision in Yerevan about finance, benefit-sharing and community rights isn’t abstract for us. It lands directly on the people who make Kenyan conservation possible. If the money flows well, conservancies grow stronger, rangers get paid on time and families see real value in protecting the animals around them. If it doesn’t, the burden stays exactly where it’s always been.

The question I’d put to every delegation

If you’re on the ground in Kenya, or anywhere in Africa, here’s the one question I’d put to every delegation in Yerevan:

What will change for the community nearest the wildlife by the end of this decade?

Not the national report. Not the press release. The community. The family living beside the corridor. The ranger on the fence line. The teacher with the school garden.

If a decision at COP17 can’t answer that question, it’s worth asking why.

Where to follow along

• The Earth Negotiations Bulletin‘s daily summaries, for a clear record of each day
• The CBD Secretariat’s COP17 updates, including its LinkedIn round-up newsletter
• #COP17 on X, for live reactions from civil society and youth delegates

I’m following it every day and will share what I learn, in plain language, through next week.

If you’re in Yerevan or watching from home, I’d be curious what’s on your list that isn’t on mine. The best follow-ups usually come from someone else noticing what I missed.