In Yerevan, Armenia, this week, a fight broke out between politicians - not the mass brawl in the country's parliament that social media enjoyed so much, but between delegates from nearly 200 countries gathered for nearly two weeks of negotiating and arguing over a new agreement on nature. Early Saturday morning, hours after talks were due to finish, they finally agreed the key parts of a new action plan. "And that's it. Perfect," said meeting president Hambardzum Matevosyan, in what we can only assume was the diplomatic equivalent of closing the laptop and walking away.
Four years earlier, the same countries had signed a landmark deal committing to "halt and reverse" the decline of nature. That 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework contained 24 targets, including putting 30% of the world's land and seas into protection by the end of the decade. The world is currently in a sixth mass extinction event, with species becoming extinct at 100 times the natural rate because of human activities, scientists say. And according to the UN this week, the world is on track to achieve just one of those two dozen targets. One out of 24. Even a generous grader would wince.
As part of this week's deal, countries acknowledged they were falling behind. "While not particularly exciting or detailed, it's good news that countries could reach agreement," said Catherine Weller of the environmental charity Fauna & Flora. "We cannot just plod on to 2030 without a course correction; nature is critical to all life on Earth: to our economies, to our wellbeing," she added. Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts, told BBC News: "We are still seeing an appalling loss, threatening the collapse of ecosystems globally. We run out of words really about how serious this is." He did add that "the better news is there are so many examples worldwide about how... to turn things around."
Indeed, countries have put 623 million acres (252m hectares) of degraded land into protection - an area bigger than Greenland. Just last month the WWF praised conservation efforts that achieved the recovery of key species including elephants, green sea turtles and tigers, with the bluefin tuna comeback held up as proof that nature can recover.
What nature cannot do, apparently, is pay for itself. Countries have recognised the main barrier to accelerating those efforts is money. In 2022 they agreed to put $30bn (£22.4bn) towards nature recovery efforts by the end of the decade and to mobilise a further $170bn from private sources. But years later, many nations have been redirecting international aid to defence budgets and to deal with repeated energy shocks, such that pledges are not at the rate required to reach those targets, according to the UN. At this meeting, more than $1bn was pledged, with half of that coming from philanthropists including Leonardo DiCaprio's Re:wild organisation.
Anna Ducros, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said there had been some progress on countries committing to reducing subsidies for industries harmful to the environment. "A concrete example is that governments subsidise large-scale fishing that is especially harmful for nature - for example, trawling," said Ducros, who was in attendance at the talks. "Right now, we have the situation where governments are paying twice. So they know that they need to increase spending on nature and climate, but at the same time, they're damaging nature."
A specific funding pot, the Cali Fund, was previously set up for private companies that profit from using genetic material found in the environment to donate to. It was estimated up to $3.6bn could be raised annually - at the start of the meeting just $10,000 had been pledged. Little progress was made on that issue; its voluntary nature makes it difficult to put pressure on companies, Bennett acknowledged. "When you have countries that have rich biodiversity in them and you have companies trying to make money out of the genetic material found in those countries they should be paying those communities," he said. "That should not be controversial." And yet.
One of the easier issues on the agenda was meant to be the approval of scientific reports into the state of nature. But a small group of countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, were reported to have frustrated that process. "The attacks on science have bothered me a lot," French Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut was reported as saying by the AFP news agency. Next month countries will gather for the annual climate conference, COP31. Its own science body, the IPCC, has faced similar challenges in the past month with passing its own scientific reports and securing funding. "This is such a blatant political move...and the IPCC is no such place for such political manoeuvring since the outputs are in humanity's interest," said Prof David Lee of Manchester University, who has worked on previous reports.