COP17: progress on species conservation?
The UN 2026 Biodiversity Conference (COP17) took place in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 31 October. The around 200 participating states agreed on an action plan to accelerate the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework adopted four years ago in Montreal. Among other measures, more funding is to be channelled into nature conservation and around 450 billion euros in subsidies for harmful activities are to be phased out.
Eco-reserves not enough
The Süddeutsche Zeitung considers the results to be inadequate:
“There was agreement that protecting the environment costs money – yet only paltry sums have trickled into the funds set up specifically for this purpose. ... Only when it comes to establishing protected areas is any progress being made more or less according to plan; the target of placing 30 percent of the Earth's surface under protection by 2030 may be achieved. But one question is whether those areas are particularly biodiverse and worthy of protection, or simply desert. And whether the areas are actually protected – not just on paper – is another. And ultimately, what matters even more is how we treat the rest of the planet, because protected areas alone are not enough to prevent collapse.”
Swiss duty to protect biodiversity
Protecting biodiversity must start on our own doorstep, warns Le Temps:
“Surveys show that the Swiss tend to view the destruction of nature as a remote problem, something that is happening far away from them, mainly in the vast tropical forests. They forget all too quickly that a third of Switzerland's species are under threat. Our natural spaces are not always properly managed and are insufficiently interconnected. Activities that are harmful to nature, such as intensive farming, continue to be heavily subsidised. We must tackle these various issues if we want to make the natural environment around us more beautiful, more biodiverse and more resilient to the pressures of climate change.”