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Cropped 21 October 2026: COP17 kicks off | Deforestation drops 15% | Acute hunger ‘doubled’

21.10.26
By:
Aruna Chandrasekhar, Orla Dwyer, Dr Giuliana Viglione

Welcome to Cropped, where Carbon Brief handpicks and explains the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

In this edition…

  • The UN biodiversity summit COP17 opened in Yerevan, Armenia.
  • A new report covered the increasing concentration of severe hunger.
  • Carbon Brief explains the biggest issues facing countries at COP17.
  • Global deforestation fell by 15% last year, a report found.
  • New science on Amazon emissions, crab hybridisation and plant-based meats.
Article Contents

Key developments

COP17 kicks off in Yerevan

GAPS AND PROMISES: Negotiations at the UN biodiversity summit began in Yerevan, Armenia, on Monday. Carbon Brief, which will be following the talks on the ground, published an interactive tracker of negotiating texts. Down to Earth noted that “if discussions go well”, countries could agree on a “set of decisions aimed at addressing the gaps highlighted in the global review”. In the Guardian, Steven Guilbeault, former environment minister of Canada, wrote that the “reality is that we are not delivering on those promises” made at COP15.

‘OFF TRACK’: Ahead of the summit, the UN released the “state of biodiversity action” report, which examined where “progress is advancing and where efforts must accelerate”. The report showed that “countries have made some progress but are still off track” for achieving most of the nature targets for 2030, reported Climate Home News. Separately, Carbon Brief analysis showed that 58% of countries have submitted nature-protection plans to the UN – two years after the original deadline.

FINANCE SHORTFALL: Carbon Brief also reported that the amount of nature finance provided by developed countries “‘falls far short’ of what is needed to meet the UN’s global goals”. Part of the problem is that “money continues to flow overwhelmingly toward activities that damage nature”, said Xinhua. Agence France-Presse reported that negotiators have been urged to “overhaul subsidies for extractive industries that harm the planet”, while noting that such subsidy reform is a “politically thorny issue”. 

Food security reports

HUNGER CONCENTRATION: Extreme hunger is “increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number” of places, according to a new report from Action Against Hunger. The report also found that humanitarian assistance for food crises declined by nearly 60% between 2022 and 2025. Kenya’s Capital FM noted that “acute hunger has doubled worldwide over the past decade”. In Pakistan, “climate-related disasters, economic hardship, displacement and shrinking humanitarian funding [are] pushing vulnerable communities deeper into food insecurity”, reported Dawn.

FOSSIL-FUELLED FERTILISERS: A new report from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food investigated how “fossil-fuel derived fertilisers sit at the centre of a web of interconnected crises”, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Uganda Radio Network noted that reliance on such inputs “leaves food systems vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts, environmental damage and rising production costs”. Meanwhile, the UK government set out an action plan to roughly triple the amount of English farmland managed organically by 2036, reported BusinessGreen.

News and views

  • ‘NATURE’ ON NATURE: A Nature editorial warned that “spending on activities that harm nature strongly exceeds the boost to biodiversity finance” that occurred since 2022. Meanwhile, a Science editorial called for equality in multilateralism, saying: “Nature’s decline does not pause for geopolitical instability – it deepens it.”
  • DEFORESTATION OFF-TRACK: Global deforestation fell 15% last year, but “remains off track” to meet its 2030 deforestation target, reported Down to Earth. El País wrote that a “shift in political priorities [in Latin America] could undo some of those gains”.
  • DATA DROUGHT: Researchers and environmentalists have accused the Indonesian government of restricting access to forest data “amid widespread wildfires raging the country”, said the Jakarta Post. It noted that the formerly freely accessible government database now warns people against “‘retrieving, extracting or converting’ the information without prior written approval”.
  • SULPHUR SHORTAGE: The conflict in the Middle East “has created a significant shortage of sulphur” – a material used in fertiliser production, reported the Financial Times. As a result, the outlet said, “fertiliser manufacturers [are] having to cut back output and warning that food prices will rise”.
  • CONSERVATION OR CLIMATE CHANGE?: BBC News covered the latest “living planet” report from WWF, which highlighted the return of the Atlantic bluefin tuna to UK waters as evidence that “conservation can work”. On Twitter, independent plankton scientist Dr Richard Kirby noted that this reappearance is a “complicated” story, but is ultimately a “result of climate change”.

Spotlight

Agenda items to watch at COP17

This week, Carbon Brief reports from the UN biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia, exploring the two biggest negotiation issues: the global review and finance for nature. 

Negotiations for COP17 kicked off on Monday in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan – one of the oldest continuously lived-in cities in the world.

Discussions here will focus on “accelerating action to protect nature”, said UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker. 

Last week’s leaders’ summit resulted in the “Yerevan declaration”, which commits to boosting implementation and “translat[ing] commitments into concrete action”. 

However, WWF said it “falls short of explicit signals” on financing and alignment of policies. 

The mood in Yerevan so far is mostly “positive”, said An Lambrechts from Greenpeace International at a press briefing. But there is a long way to go until talks wrap at the end of the month. 

Global review 

One major outcome expected from COP17 is the first global review of the progress countries have made towards the Global Biodiversity Framework targets. 

Countries need to renew “commitment and focus on delivery”, said COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan. The global review is the key way to achieve this, building on the information in the global report released before the talks. 

A 20 October non-paper – an informal document released during early negotiations – contains 149 brackets that will need to be hammered out in order to reach a final agreement on the review. (Brackets indicate areas of disagreement in UN texts.)

One heavily bracketed portion “notes with deep concern” that the 2050 nature goals “may be at risk” if 2030 targets are not achieved. 

Smaller, “contact group” discussions are taking place to try and resolve these disagreements, co-chaired by the Netherlands and Fiji. 

Earth Negotiations Bulletin said another small group has been set up to address references to “actors other than national governments”.

These “actors” include Indigenous peoples and local communities. Joji Carino from the not-for-profit Forest Peoples Programme called for this wording to be “discontinued”. 

She told a 20 October press briefing that the phrase is a “major regression”, believing it makes it sound like “governments were always the central actor” and Indigenous peoples were “just there on the side”.

Finance 

While all seems calm on the surface, the brackets on documents point to obvious conflict around nature finance.

Developed countries failed to meet their commitment to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature, Carbon Brief analysis detailed. 

At the same time, a call to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays – and whether that should include developing economies, such as China – has made its way onto the negotiation floor for the first time. 

The phrase appears four times in the heavily bracketed “non-paper” on resource mobilisation published on Monday and has been the subject of heated contact group meetings. 

At COP17, countries will also have to agree on criteria to shape a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature well after 2030. As of now, that document has 124 square brackets. 

All eyes are also on the Cali Fund. The one-of-a-kind fund for companies to compensate for genetic data use has received only $10,656 in commitments. 

Katie Lee Riddle from the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity –  a caucus of representatives of Indigenous peoples and local communities – told Carbon Brief:

“There is this mindset of ‘why should we pay for something we’re getting for free, especially in a voluntary mechanism?’ You should share benefits back to communities if you’re using data from our lands, waters and territories.”

Watch, read, listen

FISH FOOD: An investigation in the New York Times documented “crimes or concerns” related to farmed fish within the supply chains of more than 250 seafood companies. 

FACE THE FUTURE: Nature explored how a decade-long project is attempting to understand how the Amazon will respond to future changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

PLANTS OF THE PAST: Scientists are attempting to digitise “centuries of botanical history” in order to improve accessibility and to protect collections from harm, reported Atmos.

GREAT GREEN WALL FALLS: The Financial Times covered how the “Great Green Wall” project in Africa “has fallen well short of its targets”.

New science

  • “Direct human activities” – including deforestation and biomass burning – pose the “main risks” to the Amazon rainforest, while climatic stress “amplifies” these effects | Nature
  • A 2018-19 marine heatwave in the Bering Sea drove a “surge” in the abundance of a “formerly rare” crab hybrid seven years later, creating “unforeseen challenges for fisheries management” | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Around 10% of land conversion in Brazil between 2010 and 2015 was associated with the production of dairy, primarily for domestic consumption | Environmental Research Letters
  • Adopting plant-based meat alternatives could “substantially” reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and land expansion | Nature Food
  • A major beef-industry trade association in the US “engaged in extensive strategic communications efforts” between 1986 and 1996 to downplay the environmental impacts of the cattle industry | PLOS Climate

Noticeboard

This edition of Cropped was written by Aruna Chandrasekhar, Orla Dwyer and Dr Giuliana Viglione. 

Cropped is edited by Dr Giuliana Viglione. Please send tips and feedback to [email protected].