COP17: what business and investors should know

The UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan closed in the early hours of 31 October, after a final plenary of almost twelve hours that ran well past its scheduled end. Headlines will focus on the money that is still missing, and they will not be wrong. Yet a close reading of the roughly fifty decisions adopted reveals new and sometimes understated signals that matter directly to companies and investors. For a board member or an asset manager, the real question is not whether COP17 was a diplomatic success, but what has changed in the regulatory, financial and operational landscape. Here is our reading, deliberately focused on what is moving forward, without glossing over what is not.

A clear-eyed review that sets a shared course

Yerevan’s first merit is that it faced reality. The State of Biodiversity Action report, published before the opening, found that fewer than half of national targets are on track according to governments themselves, even though nearly 90% of Parties have set national targets. As the Convention’s Executive Secretary, Astrid Schomaker, put it, nobody tried to claim that the world was on track. That shared diagnosis matters: it removes the temptation of denial and forces everyone to think in terms of catching up.

The response is the “Yerevan Pathway”. It is neither a new treaty nor a new set of numerical goals, but a list of priorities to 2030. According to the official conference site and the closing press release, these priorities cover four areas: reforming subsidies and incentives that harm nature, providing financial, scientific and technical support to developing countries, aligning national budgets and economic decisions with the Kunming-Montreal framework, and strengthening monitoring and review.

For business, the third priority is the most consequential. Aligning public budgets and economic decisions with biodiversity goals prepares the ground for tougher sector policies, for public procurement criteria and for new conditions on access to finance. The Pathway does not name the economic sectors driving nature loss, but those in food and agriculture, forestry, construction and commodities already know where to look. More than 10,000 delegates attended Yerevan, a sign that the biodiversity agenda now draws a far wider audience than environment ministries alone.

COP17 also delivered a solid technical foundation, including fourteen decisions adopted in the first week alone. Taken together, the decisions cover protected areas and forest biodiversity, sustainable wildlife management, invasive alien species, marine and coastal biodiversity, synthetic biology and the mainstreaming of biodiversity into public policy. New state-of-nature indicators and a dedicated expert group on the monitoring framework strengthen accountability. None of this makes headlines, but it is the raw material from which national plans, and then regulations, will be built.

Finally, the science deserves attention. Reference to the IPBES nexus assessment, which links biodiversity, water, food and health, was kept. That systemic lens is, in our view, the most useful one for companies, because it mirrors how nature risk actually travels through agricultural supply chains.

New signals for finance and value chains

The first signal is financial. Nearly two billion US dollars in new biodiversity finance was announced in Yerevan, including 560 million through the replenishment of the Global Environment Facility and its Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, 500 million through the Species Recovery Alliance and more than 330 million through the Value Nature Fund, which is explicitly designed to mobilise private capital, according to the Convention’s closing statement as reported by Premium Times. The Asian Development Bank also launched a biodiversity bond and an investment incubator. Pledges are not disbursements, but the growth of instruments that blend public and private money is real, and it opens space for blended finance structures built around agricultural value chains.

The second signal concerns nature markets. Biodiversity offsets and credits remain recognised among the instruments for mobilising resources, the European Union launched a “Friends of Credits for Nature and Biodiversity” initiative, Peru secured a study on their additionality, and China announced a pilot for nature markets in Sichuan, Carbon Brief reports. The focus on additionality is good news for serious buyers: it pushes the market towards the standards we set out in our analysis of what good biodiversity credits look like.

The third signal targets public incentives. The Armenian Presidency launched the “Yerevan Call” on incentives positive for biodiversity and a “Friends of Target 18” group, co-chaired by Colombia and Finland. The global goal remains to reduce harmful incentives by at least 500 billion US dollars a year by 2030. For companies whose business models rely on agricultural, energy or fisheries subsidies, this is a transition risk to map now, alongside climate risk, using frameworks such as the TNFD.

The fourth signal is aimed at pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, cosmetics and agribusiness. The Cali Fund, which is meant to collect contributions from commercial users of digital sequence information on genetic resources, was maintained and clarified. The decision, adopted without objection, reaffirms indicative rates of 0.1% of revenue or 1% of profits, reserves an annual certificate for companies that meet them, and allocates half of the resources to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, Carbon Brief details. Contributions remain voluntary, but a certificate creates a visible benchmark that investors and stakeholders can track.

The fifth signal is social. Parties adopted the operating rules of the new permanent subsidiary body on Indigenous Peoples and local communities, known as the “Sevan Guidelines”. The Nature Conservancy sees this as consolidating their role in decision-making. For companies operating in forest or mining areas, the implication is clear: community consent and participation are becoming the expected norm, which requires real dialogue in due diligence.

What is still stuck, and how to prepare

It would be dishonest to ignore the hard issues that resurface at every summit. International finance remains far below needs: developed countries missed the goal of at least 20 billion US dollars a year in international biodiversity finance by 2025, according to Carbon Brief. The list of contributor countries was not expanded; interested countries may only signal their interest ahead of COP18. The shape of the post-2030 financial mechanism was deferred to COP18, which will meet in Quito, Ecuador, in 2028.

On subsidies, the final text merely “encourages” faster implementation “in accordance with national circumstances”, after objections from several countries. The Cali Fund, meanwhile, remains almost empty: less than 9,000 US dollars had been paid in by the end of the conference, with no contribution from any major company in the sector. The voluntary guidelines on climate and biodiversity were sent back for further negotiation.

Does this mean nothing is moving? That would be the wrong conclusion. Companies do not wait for COPs to feel the pressure of nature loss: they already face it in their supply chains, through the EU Deforestation Regulation, the expectations of their lenders and investors, and the shocks hitting agricultural commodities. The European Commission went to Yerevan wanting a “COP of proof, not only of promises”. Fair to argue that synergies across the conventions are the key to integrated action and pave the way to a clear direction across conventions.

In practice, three workstreams look like priorities for the coming months. First, map exposure to subsidies and incentives that are likely to be reformed, commodity by commodity. Second, for sectors that use genetic resources, weigh the cost of a Cali Fund contribution against the reputational value of a certificate. Third, start structuring credible projects now, combining smallholders, communities and blended capital, so as to be eligible for the instruments announced in Yerevan. Our reading of COP30 through a value chain lens already pointed in this direction: the companies that move without waiting for diplomatic unanimity are the ones that gain an edge.

COP17 did not change the game overnight. But it set a shared course, consolidated tools and opened new financing windows. For business and investors, that is enough to act.

Image by Magnific – Free License