# Nature summit confronts money still driving destruction

> Almost 200 countries gather in Armenia to review progress on 2030 biodiversity targets, but wildlife is collapsing and funding for damage vastly outpaces conservation spending.
- Title: Nature summit confronts money still driving destruction · RFI
- Summary: Almost 200 countries gather in Armenia to review progress on 2030 biodiversity targets, but wildlife is collapsing and funding for damage vastly outpaces…
- Keywords: cop17, yerevan, biodiversity, 2030 targets, wildlife decline, conservation funding, environmental subsidies, protected areas, indigenous peoples, kunming-montreal pact, news, world
- Source: RFI — https://rfi.fr/en/environment/20261019-nature-summit-confronts-the-money-still-driving-wildlife-destruction-cop17-yerevan
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: cop17, yerevan, biodiversity, 2030 targets, wildlife decline, conservation funding, environmental subsidies, protected areas, indigenous peoples, kunming-montreal pact, news, world
## Nearly two hundred nations convene
Almost two hundred countries gather at UN Biodiversity Cop seventeen in Yerevan, Armenia, opening Monday to review progress on the twenty thirty nature targets adopted in twenty twenty two.
## Twenty three targets, twenty two off track
The twenty twenty two agreement set twenty three targets from cutting pollution to saving threatened species and conserving thirty percent of the world's land and oceans. Countries are off track on twenty two of them.
## Progress is too slow, says UN
Astrid Schomaker, head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, says all targets remain reachable but only with significant changes. Progress is moving in the right direction but way too slowly.

> Do I think we're moving in the right direction? Yes, but way too slowly.
## Multiple barriers block action
Juliette Landry of Paris think tank IDDRI identifies lack of political will, insufficient financial resources, missing capacities and technologies as barriers. Budget cuts in rich and poor countries alike create a major obstacle.
## Wildlife populations collapsing globally
Monitored populations across nearly six thousand species fell by an average of seventy three percent between nineteen seventy and twenty twenty two, according to the conservation group WWF's Living Planet Report.
## Freshwater and South America hit hardest
Freshwater populations showed the steepest average decline at eighty five percent. South America saw the sharpest regional fall at ninety five percent between nineteen seventy and twenty twenty two.
## Oil, gas and mining threaten reserves
Zones earmarked for oil and gas overlap more than sixty one million hectares of protected tropical ecosystems, nearly the size of France. Mining concessions overlap another forty two point seven million hectares of protected areas.
## Thirty dollars damages for every dollar saved
UN figures show governments spend two point six trillion dollars a year on environmentally harmful subsidies. For every dollar invested in protecting or restoring ecosystems, about thirty dollars goes into activities that damage them.
## Corporate fund falls far short
The UN's Cali Fund, launched in February twenty twenty five with a goal of raising one billion dollars a year, has reportedly only collected six thousand dollars from companies using genetic information from nature.
## Subsidies remain hard to identify
Countries pledged in the twenty twenty two pact to cut harmful subsidies by five hundred billion dollars a year by twenty thirty but have made little progress.
## Indigenous peoples seek decision power
The summit will determine how much say indigenous peoples and local communities have in protecting ecosystems they help safeguard. Governments must agree how a permanent body created for them in twenty twenty four will work.
## Key takeaway

Nearly two hundred countries convene at UN Biodiversity Cop seventeen in Yerevan to assess progress on twenty thirty nature targets, but monitored wildlife populations fell seventy three percent since nineteen seventy and governments spend thirty dollars on ecosystem damage for every dollar protecting them.