To reverse nature loss, change what drives it

This week, at the 17th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), delegates from 195 countries and the European Union are gathering in Yerevan, Armenia, for a global review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an international set of goals and targets adopted in 2022 to tackle the biodiversity crisis. The urgent question before them is clear: What must change now to halt and reverse nature's decline and put it on a path to recovery by 2030? COP-17 comes as international cooperation is under increasing strain. Extreme weather is intensifying, ecosystem deterioration is creating new security risks, and geopolitical tensions are rising. Yet nature's decline does not pause for geopolitical instability-it deepens it. That makes effective multilateralism, with North and South as equal partners, more important, not less.