When resources are scarce, biodiversity conservation usually loses the funding battle. This was one of the clearest messages to come out of both the meetings of the CBD’s Subsidiary Bodies in Nairobi in July and August 2026 and the Kunming Dialogue, which took place in early September in Kunming, China, an informal event bringing together about 300 Parties, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), and other stakeholders to prepare for the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP 17 in Yerevan this October.
In Kunming, participants were straightforward: when implementation problems occur and resources are scarce, conservation targets take top priority, while sustainable use and access and benefit-sharing (ABS) “end up receiving less attention”. Its recurring presence at each meeting points to something structural, not accidental.
One convention, three objectives,
Given the strong emphasis on protected areas and species recovery, it is easy to overlook that the Convention on Biological Diversity was not merely a conservation treaty.
The CBD’s objectives rest on three equally weighted aims: conserving biological diversity, sustainably using its components, and fairly and equitably sharing the benefits from using genetic resources. The 23 targets set by the GBF for 2030 cover all three areas. Conservation based on areas (Targets 1 to 3), the sustainable use of wild species and agrobiodiversity (Targets 5, 9, and 10), and the implementation of benefit-sharing relating to digital sequence information. The targets most closely linked to the means of implementation, namely finance, capacity and technology, rank as the weakest within the Framework, and the gaps are particularly evident in relation to sustainable use and ABS which In Kunming was highlighted as under-resourced and under-capacitated.
Why the imbalance matters
This goes beyond fairness across the CBD’s three pillars; it is a strategic weakness for the entire Framework for several closely connected reasons.
Conservation can remain politically viable because of sustainable use and benefit-sharing. Once local communities and Indigenous Peoples gain real benefits from biodiversity rather than only restrictions on its use, it becomes much easier to maintain protected areas and strict conservation measures. Measures are therefore much less likely to be reversed. Governor Wang Yubo of Yunnan Province expressed this idea in his opening address in Kunming, linking environmental protection directly to poverty alleviation and the fair sharing of ecological benefits. Conservation efforts that lack a genuine and credible arrangement for sustainable use and benefit-sharing tend to cause resentment, lead to non-compliance, and ultimately result in policy reversal. (Diversity, 2001)
Failing to promote sustainable use weakens the evidence base that supports conservation. Resource users such as fishers, farmers, foresters, and holders of traditional knowledge provide the most reliable long-term biodiversity data because they monitor the systems they rely on. (Lauer & Aswani, 2010) Lack of investment in sustainable-use systems removes the incentives that drive stewardship necessary to maintain knowledge. (Diversity, 2022)
ABS is not a side arrangement but a trust mechanism; the fair and equitable distribution of the benefits derived from genetic resources, such as the digital sequence information which is now passing through the Cali Fund, is in fact the reason why so many developing countries and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations keep taking part in the CBD process. When benefit-sharing is neglected each time budgets are reduced, it undermines the fundamental agreement: access in return for benefits that underpins international cooperation on genetic resources. (Nunez-Vega et al., 2025, pp. 298-306)
Because the framework is skewed, the global review will also be skewed. Because less than half of the Parties have reported that their national targets are on track, and only one GBF target (on climate and ocean acidification impacts) has been rated as on track for successful implementation, the review at COP 17 is already being asked to prove its credibility. (Global review of collective progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, 2026) A review process that assesses progress in conservation well but does so poorly for sustainable use and ABS will incorrectly identify where the Framework is actually failing.
A prerequisite, not an aspiration
As many participants pointed out in Kunming, striking a balance between the three objectives of the CBD once conservation targets have been achieved is not optional; it is a necessary condition for the GBF to succeed at all. The Convention wrote conservation, sustainable use, and benefit-sharing as mutually reinforcing rather than sequential goals. If they are seen as competing for the same limited resources, all three will underperform. That is why, looking ahead to COP 17 in Yerevan on 19 October, the global review gives Parties a rare opportunity to review their approach and insist that implementation means be distributed among all three objectives, not channeled in an unbalanced way toward the one easiest to justify in a budget.
References
CBD. (2026). Global review of collective progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. https://www.cbd.int/gbf/implementation/globalreview
Diversity, C. O. (2001). Handbook on the Convention on Biological Diversity. CBD Secretariat. https://www.cbd.int/doc/handbook/cbd-hb-all-en.pdf
Diversity, C. O. (2022). Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. UN Environment Programme. https://www.unep.org/resources/kunming-montreal-global-biodiversity-framework
Lauer, M. & Aswani, S. (2010). Indigenous Knowledge and Long-term Ecological Change: Detection, Interpretation, and Responses to Changing Ecological Conditions in Pacific Island Communities. Environmental Management, 45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9471-9
Nunez-Vega, G., Reimer, L. C., Overmann, J. & Scholz, A. H. (2025). A new indicator for the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: Capturing non-monetary benefit data from access and benefit-sharing agreements. BioScience 75(4), pp. 298-306. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae132
By Constantine Bartel, Earthmind Associate
Photo by Toshizumi Muta