South Africa will push for more accessible biodiversity finance, technology transfer and practical support for developing countries at a global conference in Armenia this month, arguing that international commitments must be matched by the resources needed to implement them.
The 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), taking place in Yerevan from 19 to 30 October, will host the first global review of progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022.
The framework sets out four long-term goals and 23 targets for 2030 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. But South Africa’s delegation, led by Deputy Environment Minister Narend Singh, said the review must do more than assess how far countries had fallen behind.
“COP17 cannot be another conference that diagnoses the biodiversity crisis without equipping countries to act,” Singh said in a statement before the meeting. “South Africa will call for a fair implementation package that matches global ambition with finance, technology and capacity, while ensuring that the benefits derived from our genetic resources are shared equitably.”
Singh said the test at COP17 would be whether countries could agree on how to close the gap between global commitments and implementation.
South Africa is among the world’s 17 megadiverse countries, which together contain more than two-thirds of global biodiversity. It ranks among the top 10 countries for species richness and among the top three for marine species endemism.
More than 60% of its indigenous plant species are endemic, as are around half of its spider, amphibian, butterfly and freshwater fish species.
The latest National Biodiversity Assessment 2025, produced by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi), provides an updated picture of the state of the country’s ecosystems and species.
It found that nearly half of South Africa’s 986 ecosystem types assessed were threatened. The assessment also found that 16% of assessed plant species and 10% of animal species were threatened, while freshwater fish faced particularly high risks. Habitat loss, pollution, invasive species and climate change were among the pressures driving biodiversity decline.
Against this backdrop, Singh said South Africa was finalising its revised National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for 2026 to 2035, which would serve as the country’s main framework for implementing the global biodiversity agreement.
South Africa has also submitted its seventh national report, which assesses progress towards national targets aligned with the framework’s 23 global targets and will inform the first global review of implementation.
Singh said a central priority for South Africa at COP17 would be securing adequate, predictable and accessible finance for developing countries.
The framework’s resource mobilisation target calls for at least $200 billion (R3.3bn) a year for biodiversity from all sources by 2030. It also sets targets for international biodiversity finance to developing countries of at least $20bn a year by 2025 and $30bn a year by 2030.
Singh said the commitments needed to translate into funding that countries could access and use. Complex application processes, limited capacity to develop projects and shortages of scientific and technical expertise could delay conservation and restoration work, weaken monitoring and make it harder to integrate biodiversity into development planning.
The deputy minister said South Africa would call on developed countries to increase public grant-based and other non-debt-creating finance, in line with their obligations under the convention.
“Developing countries, we believe, should not be pushed further into debt to protect biodiversity that provides benefits well beyond their borders,” Singh said.
He is expected to meet African counterparts before COP17 to work towards a common position on financing and other negotiating priorities.
South Africa has been working to diversify its biodiversity financing, including through the Biodiversity Finance Initiative. The country has completed a finance needs assessment, an expenditure review and a biodiversity finance plan. Biodiversity-related expenditure averaged about R15.22b a year between 2016 and 2024.
Singh said the global review should lead to practical support for implementation, including capacity-building, technology transfer and stronger national biodiversity information and monitoring systems.
“The answer to implementation gaps cannot simply be more reporting obligations. We’re tired of reporting and reporting. We need practical implementation of what we need to do,” he said.
Another priority is ensuring that benefits arising from the use of genetic resources and digital sequence information (DSI) are shared fairly and equitably, including with the communities and practitioners who have safeguarded traditional knowledge over generations.
In a speech at the India–South Africa Traditional Medicines Symposium in Durban on 10 October, Singh said the Cali Fund, established under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, offered an opportunity to channel resources from companies using DSI towards communities and Indigenous-led conservation.
The issue had particular significance for South Africa, where Sanbi estimated that 2 062 indigenous plant species were used in traditional medicine. Singh said more than 200 000 traditional health practitioners depended on the knowledge, while 154 commonly used medicinal plants were threatened with extinction.
Singh said South Africa supported the effective operation of the fund, including priority access for developing countries, meaningful representation for Indigenous Peoples and communities and dedicated support for capacity-building and technology transfer.
Questions remain about how much money the fund will mobilise, how it will be distributed and who should administer it. The Global Environment Facility administers the fund but South Africa and other countries want alternative financing mechanisms to be considered.
“This is another debate and we are expecting a report on that matter of the Cali Fund,” Singh said.
South Africa will also seek to protect countries’ rights over their genetic resources through the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing. It supports a formal, party-led process to recognise specialised access and benefit-sharing instruments, while safeguarding national sovereignty, prior informed consent and benefit-sharing obligations.
Singh said South Africa will argue for stronger cooperation between international agreements on biodiversity, climate change and land degradation, given the links between the crises and the need for coordinated responses. It will also support ecosystem-based approaches to climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction.
On marine biodiversity, South Africa supports science-based processes to identify and update ecologically or biologically significant marine areas.
It maintains, however, that scientific descriptions should not determine questions of jurisdiction, governance or management. The country is also undertaking domestic processes towards ratifying the agreement on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.
Singh said South Africa would engage constructively with the African Group and other partners in Yerevan to secure an outcome that was fair, practical and focused on implementation.
The challenge, he said, was to ensure that the global framework’s ambition was matched by the finance, scientific capability, technology and institutional capacity needed to protect biodiversity.