At COP17, governments meeting in Yerevan will review global progress under a 2030 biodiversity framework for the first time, with reports showing how people rely on nature for food, water and medicine.
The 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), running Oct. 19 to 30, will assess collective progress toward the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Its 23 targets are intended for 2030.
WWF’s 2026 Living Planet Report puts the average decline in monitored vertebrate population sizes at 73% over 1970-2022. The Living Planet Index draws on 35,803 population trends covering 5,790 vertebrate species. It recorded declines of 85% among freshwater populations, 69% among terrestrial populations and 59% among marine populations. The 73% figure does not mean that 73% of species or individual animals disappeared. WWF said around half of the monitored populations were stable or increasing, but declines outweighed gains.
Food production is one way biodiversity loss can affect households. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that about 75% of global food crop types rely on pollinators. It attributes about 35% of crop output by volume to pollinators and says they improve yields in 87 of 115 major food crops. FAO warns that reduced pollination could affect the availability and cost of vitamin-rich crops. Separately, it links smallholder farmers’ health, nutrition and finances to farming practices that use fewer chemical inputs while maintaining or improving yields.
A 2021 study in Hydrological Processes valued southern Ontario wetlands’ sediment and phosphorus filtration at C$4.2 billion, plus or minus C$2.9 billion annually, in 2016 Canadian dollars. The researchers used replacement costs for the regional estimate and said replacing the filtration services would require costly land-management and infrastructure measures.
The World Health Organization says nature-derived products and compounds inspired by them underpin about 70% of cancer drugs. Its figure does not estimate how many potential future treatments could be lost as species decline.
IPBES estimated in 2019 that about 1 million species faced extinction, with many potentially lost within decades unless the pressures driving biodiversity loss are reduced. On average, about 25% of species in the animal and plant groups it assessed were threatened. IPBES identified land and sea use changes, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species as leading direct pressures. It linked those pressures to broader patterns in production and consumption, trade, population trends, technology and governance.
The “sixth mass extinction” label remains disputed. A 2020 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argued current losses point to a sixth event, while a 2025 review questioned whether the evidence meets the geological threshold. WWF’s population index alone does not settle that debate.
A CBD report released ahead of COP17 found that nearly 90% of countries had set national biodiversity targets, but fewer than half of the national targets assessed by Parties were on track. Rebecca Shaw, WWF’s chief scientist, told DW that biodiversity can seem abstract, but “we experience it absolutely every day.” The meeting runs through Oct. 30, with its first global review set to assess progress toward the framework’s targets.
