In December 2022, governments adopted a set of 23 targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. On Thursday, the United Nations published the first honest scorecard, and its headline is a split decision. Countries have made plans. Fewer than half of the targets they are tracking are on track.

The State of Biodiversity Action report was launched by Secretary-General António Guterres on Oct. 15, four days before the UN biodiversity conference, COP17, opens in Yerevan, Armenia, and will feed into the first global review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

What the Report Found

The news on commitments is good. Nearly 90% of the Convention's 196 Parties have set national biodiversity targets, close to 60% have developed national strategies and action plans, and more than 70% have submitted national reports, the Secretariat said. Indigenous peoples, local communities, subnational governments, businesses and civil society groups have registered about 5,000 commitments of their own.

Yet the same document finds that fewer than half of the national targets countries have assessed are on track. The halfway point to 2030 has arrived, and engagement has not yet become results.

The Ambition Gap

The shortfall starts with how the targets are written. National targets address on average 22 of the 23 global targets, but many do not cover their full scope, the report finds. Two examples stand out.

Target 18 calls for reducing subsidies that harm nature. Many countries have set targets to promote positive incentives, but far fewer have committed to cutting harmful subsidies, the report says. Target 3, the pledge to conserve 30% of land and sea by 2030, is covered by national pledges that fall well short of the goal.

What Is Furthest Behind

The weak points share a feature: they sit outside environment ministries. Targets requiring action on business conduct, sustainable consumption, harmful incentives and finance are among those furthest behind, the report says. Success depends on agriculture, fisheries, forestry, infrastructure, finance and business ministries, and on reforming incentives, improving corporate disclosure and redirecting investment.

Guterres put it bluntly in the launch statement. Many of the critical elements of progress, he said, including finance, capacity, cooperation and data, are still missing in action, and nature will not thrive on good intentions.

Where the Money Is

Funding is the other fault line. The framework aims to mobilize at least $200 billion a year from all sources by 2030, according to Armenpress's COP17 explainer. The Associated Press reported that efforts to raise hundreds of billions of dollars have fallen short ahead of the summit, and that the gap between stated ambition and money raised will be a central topic in Yerevan.

The GIZ, the German development agency, said a provisional version of the global review concludes that the framework triggered unprecedented global engagement, but that the pace of progress is insufficient to reach any of the targets by 2030. The UN's own release is framed more positively, noting significant progress on national commitments while calling for greater ambition and faster implementation.

What COP17 Has to Decide

The conference runs from Oct. 19 to 30. Armenia's Minister of Environment, Hambardzum Matevosyan, who will preside, said the meeting must help establish where the world stands, what is working and what must change. Astrid Schomaker, the Convention's Executive Secretary, called it an opportunity to build on what has been achieved and put biodiversity at the center of decisions across government and society. Armenia scheduled a Leaders for Nature summit for Oct. 16 to build political momentum.

Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, tied biodiversity to climate. Even if peak temperatures are limited and warming returns to 1.5°C by the end of the century, she said, the world faces decades of heightened climate impacts, with serious consequences for nature.

Reading It Alongside the Wildlife Data

The scorecard lands days after WWF's Living Planet Report, which found monitored wildlife populations down 73% on average since 1970. Blogerroom covered the caveats in its report on what that 73% figure does and does not mean. The two reports measure different things, actions on one side and outcomes on the other, but together they describe a world where plans are multiplying faster than recovery.

The case for acting is also supported by science. A global synthesis Blogerroom covered found that most ecosystem services rise with each added species, which means the losses carry economic costs. And Blogerroom's report on why protecting standing Amazon forest beats replanting trees points to the kind of cost-effective protection the framework is meant to encourage.

My view: the most telling number in the report is not 90% or fewer than half. It is the gap between the two. A country that sets a target has done the cheap part. The expensive parts, cutting subsidies and paying for protection, are where the targets are failing, and they are the decisions Yerevan will either make or postpone.