UNDP Planet Finance at CBD COP17

The session will also highlight and share experiences and guidance from developing countries based on their already more than a decade long experience on national biodiversity finance planning and implementation under the UNDP BIOFIN program (UNDP, Kazakhstan). This work provides unique opportunities for cross-learning, including south-to-north knowledge transfer to support resource mobilisation for the implementation of GBF.

Organized by IUCN, UNDP BIOFIN and OECD.

In direct support for the Armenia COP 31 Presidency’s Flagship – The Yerevan Call on Positive Incentives towards Biodiversity, the 2-year Yerevan Biodiversity Finance Challenge (2026-2028) will galvanize renewed momentum amongst the countries towards Targets 18 and 19. With the COP Presidency’s leadership and through the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership, the Challenge will create a coalition of like-minded countries that are determined to make a huge leap forward towards Targets 18 and 19. This group, championed by Armenia, will gather periodically to share insights and advocate for biodiversity budget tagging and subsidies screening and greening at international fora. Ministries of planning, finance, and statistical agencies may be invited as observers to this proposed group.

Organized by UNDP BIOFIN and the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership.

This event will bring together representatives from governments, international organizations, companies, and financial institutions to exchange experiences and lessons learned in advancing the implementation of Target 15 and NBSAPs, with a particular focus on megadiverse countries, showing cases from Brazil, Indonesia and Asean/Latam countries. Discussions will explore policy developments, progress on NBSAP implementation, practical approaches to corporate transparency and nature-related disclosure, and the role of the private sector in supporting national biodiversity goals. By sharing experiences and successful practices from different regions around the global, the side event aims to strengthen collaboration among governments, businesses, financial institutions, and civil society, fostering the implementation of effective actions to advance the objectives of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The event will mark the next phase of the formalised Friends of T18 (FoT18) – to be launched at COP17 – as a strategic platform for Target 18 coordination and implementation. This platform aims to:

• Accelerate implementation of KMGBF Target 18
• Support the reform of biodiversity-harmful subsidies and scaling of positive incentives
• Strengthen whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach
• Enable technical exchange of information, peer learning, and collaboration between Parties and stakeholders.

The other initiatives to be profiled during this event include:

• The Yerevan Call on Positive Incentives Towards Biodiversity
• UNDP BIOFIN’s work with countries on the reform of environmentally harmful subsidies
• Conservation International’s Accelerating Rapid Transition of Subsidies and Incentives (ARTSI) Initiative
• Business for Nature’s Incentives Campaign

Organized by IISD, the Government of Finland, Conservation International, UNDP BIOFIN and Business for Nature.

Through country exchange, engagement and collective reflection, the session will invite participants to consider what action is needed to update NBSAPs and begin implementation. By connecting project-based learning with the broader “Global Report on Collective Progress in the Implementation of the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”, this side event will contribute to discussions at COP17 on how to accelerate GBF implementation and position gender equality as a driver of effective, inclusive, and sustainable biodiversity action.

Organized by Conservation International.

Includes the launch of the compendium. Further speakers from Armenia, Colombia and the Philippines to be announced.

COP17 will be an important moment for advancing the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, with agriculture central to that effort. As the largest human use of land and the largest user of freshwater, agriculture is closely connected to many of the ecosystems the Framework seeks to protect. At the same time, it is a powerful lever for restoring nature, strengthening water resilience and feeding a growing population.

Against this backdrop, the roundtable will focus on a central challenge: how to close the gap between innovation and sustained impact. Innovation, technology and AI offer significant potential, but their impact depends on whether they can reach diverse contexts and become embedded in the institutions, markets and systems needed to deliver at scale over time.

We are bringing together a small group of senior representatives from business, farmer organizations, finance, research, civil society and multilateral organizations for an exchange on the barriers that continue to limit impact, the enabling conditions that need to be strengthened or better connected, and where existing efforts could be aligned or accelerated following COP17.

The aim is not simply to showcase solutions, but to explore what needs to change in practice so that promising approaches can deliver stronger outcomes for biodiversity, water resilience and food security.

Organized by Business for Nature.

Corporate buyers increasingly need nature-related data from their supply chains to understand the full landscape of their nature risk and impacts — but most small and medium-sized suppliers lack the capacity, budget, or tools to produce it. This session showcases how solutions from the Nature Intelligence for Business Grand Challenge are closing the gap in practice and helping businesses address shareholder and investor concerns and get ahead of regulatory requirements. A panel of solution providers and pilot participants will discuss and share real deployment lessons — what’s working, what isn’t, and considerations for selecting tools and analyzing nature risk and resilience along your supply chain. Leave with a practical playbook for turning supplier nature data into decision-useful business insight.

Official launch of the new UNDP-BIOFIN/GIZ publication on ABS Finance. The event will present practical approaches for integrating ABS into National Biodiversity Finance Plans, showcase financing instruments supporting ABS value chains, discuss investments needed to operationalize ABS systems, and highlight country case studies. The session will promote implementation of Target 19 of the KMGBF and strengthen collaboration between ABS and biodiversity finance communities

Includes the launch of a publication.

The event will present the results from the “Economics of Rio Synergies Project” in Mongolia, financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), combining the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative’s Rio Synergies approach with FAO’s Integrated Land Use Planning Approach (ILUP). Discussions will focus on integrated spatial planning, joint monitoring and reporting systems, and coordinated institutional processes that can reduce duplication, improve policy coherence, and mobilize finance for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, and sustainable land management. By demonstrating how integrated planning and economics can align biodiversity, land, and climate objectives, the event aims to catalyze partnerships and investments that support implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Rio Convention commitments.

International financial centers (Institut de la Finance Durable, Finance Montréal, with the FC4S network) present financial tools — bonds, dedicated funds, targeted investments, value chain transitions — for financing ecological transition and nature conservation, through presentations from banks, insurers and investors.

Introduces the BIF, a new DBSA–UNDP blended-finance vehicle using first-loss capital, guarantees and technical assistance to de-risk early-stage biodiversity projects and mobilise capital across South Africa and SADC. Draws on the R2.5bn Cape Water Outcomes-Based Bond and other DBSA transactions as case studies, closing with a discussion on co-investment opportunities.

Hosted by UNDP, UN Women, with the National Committee for Gender Equality of Mongolia this side event aims to elevate gender equality as a transformative lever across climate and nature agendas by showcasing evidence, partnerships, and scalable solutions. It will highlight lessons learned and good practices from countries that have successfully integrated gender equality into land, climate, and biodiversity priorities, and implemented gender-responsive, women-led solutions that deliver co-benefits and relevant outcomes from the UNCCD COP17 in Mongol. In doing so, the event will emphasize the critical role of equitable policies and institutional frameworks in enabling scalable, gender-responsive outcomes across sectors; showcase country-level experiences in translating global commitments into locally grounded action that strengthens women’s leadership, agency, and community ownership; and explore pathways to identify, finance, and scale up gender-responsive solutions that deliver integrated outcomes for land, biodiversity, and climate.

The event will include a presentation from UNEP-WCMC on the status of Target 15 implementation. This will summarize insights from the draft Global Report on Collective Progress in the Implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which found that according to self-assessments, two thirds of national targets show no progress or insufficient progress on Target 15. It will also relay lessons from UNEP-WCMC’s National Monitoring Support Initiative and other support to national and regional partners, on finding suitable data for headline indicator 15.1.

The event will also shed light on the findings from the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment by one of the assessment’s co-chairs. Published in February 2026, the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment reaffirmed that all businesses impact and depend on nature and sufficient data and methods already exist for businesses to be able to manage and report on these impacts and dependencies and associated risks and opportunities. Despite this, the assessment found that fewer than 1% of publicly traded companies report on nature. Drawing on over 100 actions for governments, finance, business and civil society identified in the assessment, the keynote will emphasize that businesses need to play an active role but cannot do it alone.

Ministerial event with the Netherlands.

This event brings together the co-conveners of Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), UNDP BIOFIN, FSD Africa, and Birdlife, alongside investors including Aviva, BTG Pactual, Church of England Pensions Board, and Rebalance Earth to address that, in practice. We will look at how investors are investing in a way that aligns with the GBF across the three reasons they invest, managing nature risk, capturing growth, and delivering measurable impact. The IIGCC will share a practical approach for describing any nature investment through a consistent set of attributes, regardless of label, and put it to the room for feedback. The aim is clear, and we need to turn the ambition of the global review into steps investors can act on.

This side-event will showcase the latest progress by countries in addressing biodiversity-harmful financial flows, including national assessments and multi-stakeholder workshops (together with the private sector) such as those convened in Paris by the Netherlands. It will also highlight efforts by international organisations such as OECD and BIOFIN, particularly in supporting (developing) countries to identify, prioritize, and reform subsidies harmful to biodiversity.

Organized by UNDP BIOFIN and the Netherlands.