Friday 30 October marked the final day of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought around 15,000 delegates together in Yerevan, Armenia. At the heart of two weeks of negotiations was the first ever review of the Global Biodiversity Framework intended to both assess collective progress towards its 23 targets and identify the actions needed to deliver on these objectives by 2030. While we arrived in Yerevan with technical evidence exposing the implementation gap facing marine and coastal ecosystems in comparison to others, the stakes of COP17 was to translate this evidence into concrete political outcomes. With just four years left, did COP17 deliver the political recognition and momentum needed for the ocean?
A Review Of Collective Action: From Recognising The Gaps To Setting Clear Priorities For Action
Published ahead of COP17, the technical findings of the Global Review delivered a clear message: national efforts to advance the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) remain insufficient, particularly for marine and coastal ecosystems. This warning echoed throughout the conference, with the ocean community consistently calling attention to the gap between ambition and delivery.
The Ocean Protection Gap Report 2026 provided a stark illustration of this shortfall: with just four years left to achieve the 2030 goal of protecting and conserving 30% of the world’s land and ocean, only 10% of the ocean is designated as such, and just 3.5% assessed as effectively protected. Looking beyond marine protected areas, the OCP's report, The Ocean Breakthroughs and the Global Biodiversity, offers a broader perspective, assessing how marine conservation and other key ocean sectors such as aquatic food systems and ocean renewable energy contribute to the GBF targets. It underscores that while commitments and action are growing, they are not yet consistently translating into measurable biodiversity outcomes, highlighting the need to move from ambition to implementation, align finance with biodiversity objectives, and improve monitoring to assess ecological outcomes.
Adding to this momentum, more than 140 organisations and leading voices across civil society urged governments to accelerate ocean conservation.
At COP17, Parties were tasked with translating these technical findings into political conclusions – what became known as the “Yerevan pathway” – to guide the next phase of implementation and inform the revision of their national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs), due in 2028. Extensive debates and competing text proposals revealed significant disagreements. Ultimately, the final decision welcomes the technical findings while noting with deep concern that the 2030 targets will not be achieved unless implementation is rapidly accelerated.
It notably recognises that marine and coastal ecosystems remain insufficiently reflected in national strategies, targets and reporting. Most importantly, despite the initial reluctance among Parties to single out particular biomes or sectors, the ocean was ultimately recognised as a priority of action. Yet, this positive signal is tempered by cautious wording: stronger commitments are envisaged for “Parties that wish to do so”, “as appropriate and where relevant”. Repeated qualifications concerning national circumstances, priorities and capabilities underlined the nationally determined nature of biodiversity strategies, leaving countries considerable discretion over how to respond. The decision therefore provides political guidance, but its impact will ultimately depend on what Governments do.
Bridging the implementation gap will inevitably require adequate means of implementation, notably finance which, unsurprisingly, featured prominently in the negotiations. Delegates raised concerns over declining aid levels and a projected 27% decline in environmental funding between 2026 and 2030. One of the most contentious issues was the prospect of “broadening the contributor base” – in other words, determining which countries should contribute to biodiversity finance. The final decision “recognises” the benefits of expanding this list, while stating that no country would be added without prior confidential consultations with countries. For marine protection, the gap is particularly visible: the Ocean Protection Gap Report estimates that delivering the “30x30” target in the marine environment will require around USD 16 billion annually, compared with current spending of approximately USD 1.8 billion. Closing this gap is essential to ensure that commitments translate into effective, lasting protection.
Finally, delivering on the Framework will depend not only on stronger commitments and financing, but also on the participation of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in implementation. While their role is widely recognised as essential to biodiversity conservation, only their meaningful participation and access to resources will deliver the impact needed. Agreement on the functioning of the new subsidiary body dedicated to traditional knowledge was an important step, although questions concerning Indigenous Peoples’ representation remained unresolved. Looking ahead, this highlights a broader challenge for the next phase of the Framework: ensuring that stronger institutions and national commitments support the rights, knowledge and leadership of those sustaining biodiversity.
Marine and coastal biodiversity: turning ambition into effective implementation
Two years after “the bluest COP in CBD history”, COP17 offered an opportunity to sustain the momentum for the ocean and reaffirm a simple but powerful message: nature is also blue. While the ocean was not expected to feature as prominently as it had in Cali, Yerevan remained an important moment to advance two decisions adopted there related to ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs) and the CBD’s work on marine and coastal biodiversity with a view to support implementation of the GBF.Discussions focused on ensuring that best available knowledge translates into more effective protection, including in the high seas, where the recently adopted Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) offers new opportunities to advance the 30x30 target. While most Parties sought to reach a compromise, one country's objections over participation and references to the Agreement slowed progress.
The ocean’s visibility at COP17 extended beyond the negotiating rooms. The first ever Ocean Pavilion at a CBD COP successfully brought together governments, scientists, Indigenous peoples, local communities, and civil society organisations, to showcase solutions to sustainably manage, protect and restore marine ecosystems. It also reached the political stage with the Sustainable Ocean Night, which brought ministers and international partners together on the eve of the high-level segment, placing the ocean in the spotlight. Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, further emphasised the need to place the ocean at the heart of biodiversity action, urging participants to “refocus on what is really important on planet Earth when it comes to life, which is the ocean”.
Mobilisation across the entire ocean community offered encouraging examples of this ambition. For instance, the Blue Shipping Corridors’ statement, announced during Sustainable Ocean Night, connects shipping with ocean health ahead of COP31, showcasing that halting and reversing marine biodiversity loss cannot be achieved through conservation and restoration alone: it also means addressing the pressures driving that loss. Another example was the inter-parliamentary initiative to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing which highlighted legislators’ role in addressing pressures on marine biodiversity. These are just two examples of a much broader mobilisation, bringing different actors together around shared objectives.
The BBNJ Agreement also helped place the ocean higher on COP17’s political agenda, featuring prominently in discussions across the negotiations and side events. Widely recognised as a success of multilateralism, its entry into force gave renewed momentum to ocean protection and demonstrated that countries can still come together to address shared environmental challenges. With its first COP approaching, the task is now to translate this milestone into effective protection of the high seas. Close alignment between the BBNJ Agreement and the CBD will be essential, particularly cooperation between their respective secretariats, to bring the CBD’s scientific and technical expertise to bear on BBNJ implementation. This need was notably reflected in the CBD’s discussions on collaboration with other international organisations, where the BBNJ Agreement featured explicitly.
Biodiversity and climate: Rio Cooperation put to the test
COP17 concluded just days before COP31 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Antalya, Türkiye, offering a timely opportunity to build stronger links between the biodiversity and climate agendas. The two challenges are deeply interconnected: biodiversity loss and climate change cannot be addressed in isolation, and progress on one depends in part on action on the other.
After Cali, where the Colombian COP16 Presidency had made synergies between biodiversity and climate action a political priority, expectations for further progress were high. At COP17, negotiations focused on a roadmap to improve cooperation across the Rio Conventions – built on two years of technical work undertaken in response to a COP16 decision calling for exploring stronger policy coherence across the three conventions. The resulting roadmap sought to translate that ambition into practical cooperation, including opportunities relevant to the ocean.
Yet that momentum proved difficult to sustain. Resistance extended even to the use of the term “synergies”, and Parties ultimately stopped short of adopting the roadmap, instead referring it for further peer review and consideration at the CBD’s next scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting (SBSTTA-29). While this preserves the technical work undertaken so far, including references to ocean action, it postpones agreement on a shared direction for cooperation. The contrast with Cali exposes a persistent challenge: acknowledging that environmental crises are interconnected does not necessarily translate into political willingness to address them together.
Political initiatives outside the negotiations nevertheless offer a more encouraging prospect for Antalya. Under the leadership of Türkiye, Rio Synergies Group for Action - expected to launch at COP31 - offers an opportunity to connect national climate, biodiversity and land priorities with technical support, partnerships and financing. As a country-led initiative, it could help translate political commitments into coordinated implementation while discussions continue.
Against this backdrop, the growing number of events on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) illustrated not only the increasing interest in these technologies, but also the need to account for their potential impacts on nature and people. With significant uncertainties remaining around their effectiveness, scalability and potential adverse effects, one message must be carried forward to COP31: climate action must not come at the expense of nature or people. Stronger alignment between climate and biodiversity action is essential to ensure that efforts to address one crisis do not exacerbate the other, but instead deliver mutually reinforcing benefits.
The journey from Yerevan to Antalya offers an opportunity to turn the ocean’s growing political visibility into collective action. The Presidency-led ocean declaration in preparation can help mobilise that ambition. For OCP, this is what weaving a “blue thread” means: ensuring that biodiversity and climate commitments reinforce each other across national policies and international agreements. Antalya can carry this vision forward – and show that a “blue COP” delivers lasting benefits for the ocean and the people who depend on it.