On 15 October, during the conference PRI in Person ahead of COP17, the Paper “From Cali to Yerevan: Is the Financial System on Track?” was presented by UNEP FI on behalf of the Steering Committee for the Finance and Biodiversity Day, of which the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation is part. It provides an account of what the finance sector has done since COP16 in Cali and provides input into the first Global Review of Collective Progress in the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework. It concludes that the architecture and the tools of biodiversity finance have advanced, but not the mandates, the fiscal reform, and the direct access at scale that would turn architecture into flows.
Four years on from the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF, or the Framework), and twenty months on from the completion of the Strategy for Resource Mobilisation at the resumed session of COP16 in Rome, the global financial system has built a credible architecture for nature but has not aligned financial flows at the scale or the speed the 2030 targets require.
Second status update feeding into the Global Review
In 2024, the briefing note From Kunming-Montreal to Cali: Is the Financial System on Track? summarised the global finance sector’s response to the roadmap in the first two years after the Framework was adopted. This second status update covers the two years since and is published ahead of the third Finance and Biodiversity Day taking place during COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia. This paper, however, is published at a different juncture from its predecessor. COP17 presents the first Global Review of Collective Progress, the point at which the Framework is formally assessed at its halfway mark. This report card is therefore not only an account of what the finance sector has done. It is an input into a review that will determine whether Parties conclude that the finance architecture of the Framework is working.
Composition of the Finance & Biodiversity Day Steering Committee
The paper is presented by UNEP FI on behalf of the Steering Committee for the Finance and Biodiversity Day, comprising the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Bank Group, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Multilateral Development Bank (MDB) Working Group on Nature (represented by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation.
An advanced biodiversity finance architecture, lacking an enabling environment
During the two years from Cali to Yerevan the architecture has been advanced. IPSAS 51 gives governments a way to recognse conservation areas as assets rather than expenses. Building on the 1,154 organisations that the TNFD’s 2026 Status Report identifies as reporting on a voluntary basis aligned to its recommendations, the ISSB has moved from research into developing a Practice Statement on nature-related risks and opportunities, and the GRI has revised its biodiversity standard, GRI 101, to cover impacts. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility has been launched. The Cali Fund exists.
What has not happened is deployment: the mandates, the fiscal reform, and the direct access at scale that would turn architecture into flows.
Calling for a systematic assessment of the alignment of financial flows
The second structural finding of this report card concerns measurement. Public flows are tracked reasonably well, through donor reporting, national budget tagging and multilateral fund disbursement data. Private flows are not. The Global Report records US$ 32.8 billion of private finance over four years, reported by only 26 per cent of Parties, and concedes that the Goal D headline indicators do not capture whether financing for harmful activities is being reduced or redirected at all. That leaves both halves of the private ledger invisible to the Convention: the positive flows that Target 19(c) and 19(d) exist to mobilise, and the transition of harmful flows that Target 18 and Target 14 exist to drive. The evidence assembled here suggests this is at least in part a reporting gap rather than a market gap. Private finance for nature is growing, but it is not being captured in full in any data set, yet.
The finance sector enters COP17 with a credible architecture, a sound evidence base and a set of working models. What remains is the political will to mandate, the operational will to replicate, and the institutional will to put Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the centre of the system rather than at its edge.