// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Protecting nature means valuing biodiversity
Joni Mitchell performed her environmental anthem Big Yellow Taxi at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, which attracted around 600,000 people.Credit: Tony Russell/Redferns/Getty
The words of Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s 1970 environmental anthem Big Yellow Taxi will be echoing in the halls of the United Nations biodiversity conference (COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia, that begins on 19 October.
Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got / Till it’s gone / They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot.
“Nature is in freefall,” according to the Living Planet Report 2026, published on 7 October by conservation charity WWF. Between 1970 and 2022, the sizes of vertebrate wildlife populations that WWF research teams have been monitoring decreased by 73% (see go.nature.com/4zy2zxd).
Lay of the land: terrestrial conservation efforts cover a wider area than thought
Almost four years ago at COP15 in Montreal, Canada, countries agreed on targets to stop and eventually reverse biodiversity loss by 2050. The goals included protecting 30% of land and water habitats by 2030 (also called the 30 × 30 target) and to substantially increase annual funding for conservation from public and private sources — to at least US$30 billion for low-income nations and small island states — by the end of the decade. Although these goals are not currently on course to be met, official figures could be underestimating the global amount of protected land, suggests a study published on 14 October (H. M. K. O’Neill et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11157-4; 2026).
The Living Planet Report notes that some species are no longer considered endangered — including the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) and the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas). But if the global decline in biodiversity is to be halted, a much more fundamental change is needed: the value of natural capital and ecosystem services must be factored into nations’ decision-making.
Many of the poorest countries that are rich in biodiversity rely heavily on international public and philanthropic funding to protect their natural resources. In Montreal, countries promised to mobilize at least $200 billion per year by the end of the decade. Some estimates suggest that the world has already surpassed that: global biodiversity finance trebled from roughly $100 billion in 2019 to around $300 billion in 2024, according to reports by the Paulson Institute, a think tank in Chicago, Illinois (see go.nature.com/3vuuvfz and go.nature.com/4yhgtuc). As of June 2025, 12 national and regional governments have contributed $386 million to a biodiversity fund for low- and middle-income countries. The fund currently supports 82 projects, including initiatives backing ecotourism in Indonesia and locally managed marine conservation in Madagascar.
The problem is that spending on activities that harm nature strongly exceeds the boost to biodiversity finance. For instance, it will now cost around $1.3 trillion a year to achieve the 30 × 30 target by 2030, suggests the Paulson Institute report. Moreover, several small but important biodiversity funds are struggling. For instance, the Cali Fund, which was launched last year, has received barely any donations so far. Companies that profit from using genetic-sequence data gathered in biodiversity-rich nations are encouraged to pay into this pot. As of now, businesses have contributed a grand total of $6,000.
Biodiversity conservation has an evidence problem — it’s time to fix it