Dialogue on the Yerevan Biodiversity Finance Challenge

VENUE: UN Pavillion, Blue Zone

DATE: October 20 2026, 1:30-3:00 PM

FORMAT: Roundtable

HOST: UNDP

PARTNERS: Germany, Armenia, Norway, NBSAP Accelerator Partnership, IKI, Countries TBD

Background and Context

Globally, for every dollar spent protecting nature, roughly thirty are spent on activities that degrade it. Reversing that ratio starts with knowing what countries spend, where the money comes from, and which incentives work against their own biodiversity goals. Many countries now have that baseline. The next step is to embed it in how governments plan, budget and track spending.

That is the purpose of the Yerevan Biodiversity Finance Challenge. The two-year Challenge is being launched by a collaboration between UNDP and the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership, with the support from Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and its’ International Climate Initiative (IKI). Together with the Yerevan Call on Incentives Positive for Biodiversity and the Friends of Target 18, this Challenge is one of the three pillars of the Armenian COP17 Presidency’s Finance Flagship Initiative. The initiative provides political momentum and enabling environment for accelerating and expanding positive incentives while advancing subsidy reform to accelerate implementation of Target 18. Through the IKI-supported “UNDP Funding Windows - Nature Pledge Flagship”, the Challenge will be the practical enabler of the initiative, providing technical support for countries that are ready to implement an innovative approach. It builds on the work of the UNDP Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), and its focus on national finance follows a theme that ran through the Kunming Dialogues, specifically addressing Target 18 and 19.

Objective

The objective of this event is to convene potential participating countries, technical experts, and financial partners for a strategic discussion on practical pathways to implement KMGBF Targets 18 and 19 through the upcoming Yerevan Biodiversity Finance Challenge (YBFC).

Specifically, this session will:

1. Preliminarily introduce the Challenge, which will be officially launched by COP17 Presidency on 26 October.
2. Facilitate peer-to-peer exchange on accelerating the achievement of GBF Target 18 and 19
3. Engage financial and development partners to mobilize co-funding, alignment, and technical support for the Challenge’s country-level implementation.

Format

The event will be a 90-minute session featuring keynote remarks followed by a moderated roundtable discussion. The format is designed to be interactive to facilitate experience exchange and dialogue among countries. The event will conclude with a Q&A session with the audience.

The roundtable will be introduced by the moderator (5 minutes), and panelists will have one guiding question to answer in 3 minutes each. At the end, each panelist will have 1 minute for a final pitch.

Participants

The event is open to all COP17 participants with access to the Blue Zone, including NBSAP Accelerator Partnership members and countries interested to participate in the Challenge.

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