Countries still way behind on UN biodiversity targets, research shows

…Diversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia, next month. A draft released in July warned that none of the 23 goals in the agreement would be reached by 2030 "unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly". " Progress is being made clearly, but it is uneven, and it is clearly also not at the pace and scale required to achieve the Framework's 23 targets by 2030, " Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UNCBD, said at a briefing this month. The Campaign for Nature report said around 26 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas would be protected if all existing…

…were needed to ensure that ecosystems were genuinely protected, it said, noting that of the 10 per cent of the ocean currently covered by protection plans, only 3.5 per cent was considered "effectively" protected. " There's a significant gap between protection on paper and protection in practice. A line on a map does not mean protection in the water ," said Pauli Merriman, senior director for oceans at WWF International. Published on September 23, 2026…