Cropped 4 November 2026: COP17 concludes | ‘Roadmap’ to end deforestation | Antarctic agreement stalls

04.11.26

By:

Orla Dwyer, Cecilia Keating, 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 COP17 UN nature talks in Yerevan ended with a 12-hour plenary session. 
• Nations eventually reached agreements on finance, a progress review and more. 
• Countries failed to agree to a new marine protected area in Antarctica.
• Carbon Brief explains the long-awaited Brazil-led deforestation roadmap.
• New research on freshwater species, forest temperatures and wildfires.

Key developments

COP17’s early-morning ending 

YEREVAN WRAP: The COP17 UN nature talks in Yerevan, Armenia, ended with several key agreements, including the first “global review” of progress towards 2030 nature targets, reported Carbon Brief. Agence France-Presse said the “hard-fought” outcome was “tempered by acrimonious debates” and “limited progress on some of the most contentious issues”. The New York Times said countries “reaffirm[ed] their pledges to protect nature”, but Reuters noted that finance “remains elusive”. 

12-HOUR PLENARY: The negotiations overran from Friday night into Saturday morning, noted BBC News. Climate Home News said that, among the other decisions, countries “for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states” to contribute to nature finance. The Guardian reported on “growing” calls for reform of nature COP summits as governments are “likely on track to continue their record of never having met a target”. 

REACTION: Writing in Reuters, Canada’s former environment minister, Steven Guilbeault – who was central to COP15 negotiations – said the success of COP17 will be “measured by the action governments take in the years ahead”. Linda Krueger from the Nature Conservancy said in a statement: “As attention turns to COP31, one reality must remain front and centre: there is no credible path to tackling climate change without tackling nature loss too.” 

COP17 key outcomes 

PROGRESS REVIEW: As Carbon Brief outlined, countries agreed on the first stocktake of progress towards nature targets for 2030. This “global review” decision “urges” countries to accelerate implementation of global nature targets, “including by increased ambition”. It also “encourages” countries to accelerate reform of nature-harming subsidies. 

FINANCIAL FLOWS: Countries also signed off on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” decision on resource mobilisation. Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest”. It also agreed on criteria to shape and fund a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.

GENETIC INFO: A decision on digital sequence information – the genetic data derived from nature – looked uncertain, but countries reached agreement by the summit’s close. This “reaffirms” the indicative contribution rates to the Cali Fund for nature, which was agreed at COP16. However, most of the work relating to the Cali Fund has been pushed to intersessional negotiations before the next UN biodiversity summit, COP18. 

INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION: At the end of the final COP17 plenary, on the morning of 31 October, countries agreed on the “modus operandi” of a new permanent body for Indigenous peoples. This sets out the terms of how the body would be implemented, details on its budget and other organisational matters. Read Carbon Brief’s full COP17 article for more on these and other key outcomes from the Yerevan negotiations.

News and views

• FATAL FIRES: A surge in forest and land fires in Indonesia in September pushed air pollution to “unprecedented levels” and resulted in an estimated 3,560 deaths, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. 
• MAJOR VOTE: Democrat politicians “won control of both chambers of Congress” in the US midterm elections, reported the Associated Press. Civil Eats said this “could reshape conversations around a farm bill” – a major piece of agriculture policy that Congress has been unable to pass since 2023.
• TURKEY TALKS: The UN climate summit, COP31, begins on Monday in Antalya, Turkey, with difficult negotiations expected on climate finance, adaptation and ocean climate action, reported Carbon Brief. Carbon Brief’s “who wants what” grid tracked country positions on these and other key issues.
• NO ANTARCTIC AGREEMENT: Despite “high expectations”, the meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources ended without agreement on a new fisheries management plan for Antarctic krill or a new Antarctic marine protected area (MPA), reported Mongabay. 
• RESTORE AND RECOVER: One of England’s “most ambitious nature recovery projects” can proceed after campaigners raised £30m to buy the Rothbury estate in Northumberland, which is the “size of Athens”, reported the Guardian. 
• FOREST LOSS: A forested, mountainous region in Angola has been declared a protected area after it “lost 43% of its central forest over two decades”, reported Mongabay. The outlet said the Angolan government’s decision followed “years of appeals”. 

Spotlight

What does the ‘roadmap’ on ending deforestation say?

This week, Carbon Brief explains the COP30 presidency’s newly released “deforestation roadmap”. 

On 3 November, the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate talks released its long-awaited “roadmap” on ending deforestation. 

The voluntary roadmap was one of the signature announcements of the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate summit in Belém – albeit one that fell outside the official, negotiated outcomes.

Instead, the roadmap’s stated objective was to “translate forest-related outcomes into coordinated, country-led action while respecting different national circumstances, priorities and implementation challenges”.

Following the conclusion of COP30, the presidency – along with the Climate Policy Initiative thinktank – received more than 200 contributions from countries, civil society organisations, Indigenous peoples, academic researchers, the private sector and other groups. 

A ‘practical pathway’

The roadmap divided forest action into three complementary parts: national action, international action and financial mechanisms. 

For each of the three, the document highlighted current actions or instruments and the enabling conditions required to promote action. Then, it offered “COP30 presidency proposals on the way forward” on each pillar.

During the launch event for the roadmap, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago said that he hoped the roadmap would be a “living document” and that it could provide countries with a “practical pathway for climate action”.

Under “national efforts”, the roadmap identified 18 policies or “implementation approaches” that countries can use to address forest loss and degradation – although it noted that the list is not intended to serve as an “exhaustive or prescriptive classification”.

This included a wide range of approaches, including establishing or maintaining protected areas, recognising the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, managing the spread of pests and plant diseases and restricting permits for activities associated with forest conversion.

On “international architecture for forest action”, the roadmap discussed how various international environmental and human-rights instruments address the problem of deforestation in different ways. 

The roadmap highlighted some of the global forest-monitoring initiatives that can support national efforts, while noting that countries’ capacity for accessing and using such information “remains uneven”. 

The roadmap noted that countries need an estimated $300bn per year by 2030 to halt and reverse deforestation, yet current finance reaches less than one-third of that figure. 

Of this, nearly 90% comes from domestic public finance, as forest countries already dedicate “substantial effort” to protecting their domestic policies and budgets, the roadmap said. 

The roadmap offers 10 proposals for action on forest finance, including aligning domestic finance flows to support forest action, enacting effective benefits-sharing measures and strengthening the position of forests in carbon markets.

It concludes with an appeal to countries to “keep the collective dialogue going” through the conclusion of the second global stocktake in 2028.

In a statement, Kelly Stone, coordinator of the civil society network Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance, said: 

“The forest commitments in the first global stocktake and this roadmap process are important steps, but these commitments need to translate into actual urgent action on the ground.

“This roadmap needs to be taken forward in a process where countries are working together for rapid, ambitious action on the ground to address deforestation and degradation and protect food security. We cannot afford to wait.”

This is an excerpt from Carbon Brief’s explainer on the deforestation roadmap. Read the piece in full here.

Watch, read, listen

RANGER DANGER: Radio France Internationale spoke to a ranger at Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the DRC about the “challenges of preserving nature in a conflict zone”. 

AMOC: The BBC World Service podcast the Climate Question explored the impacts of the weakening of the “main system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean – known as AMOC”. 

POO INVESTIGATION: A video from the Conversation explained how scientists are using satellite pictures of penguin poo to understand dietary shifts occurring due to climate change.

SWAMPED IN SEDIMENT: Grist reported on efforts in Louisiana to restore disappearing wetlands by piping in sediment-filled river water to rebuild the land.

New science

• Freshwater species of amphibians, fish, mammals, reptiles, dragonflies and damselflies in “highly-developed and water-managed” regions are “strongly affected” by multiple overlapping threats, including agriculture and climate change | Science
• One-third of “other effective area-based conservation measures” – geographically defined areas distinct from traditional protected areas – directly adjoin and enlarge official conservation areas | Nature Ecology & Evolution
• The temperature-regulation capacity of the world’s forests “significantly strengthened” over 2001-20 | Nature Plants
• Afforestation schemes in temperate regions increased fire occurrence by 26% and burned area by 23% over 2001-23 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Noticeboard

• 5-6 November: Global Pollinator Conference, Rome
• 9-12 November: International Tropical Timber Council meeting, Yokohama, Japan
• 9-20 November: UN climate summit COP31, Antalya, Turkey
• 8 November: PhD position in modelling extreme wildfire events at the University of Lausanne | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lausanne, Switzerland.
• 17-20 November: World conference on marine biodiversity, Bruges, Belgium
• 20 November: Communications director at US Nature Initiative | Salary: $120,000-$135,000. Location: Remote
• 22 November: Science professional officer at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea | Salary: Unknown. Location: Copenhagen, Denmark