Every four years, global progress toward biodiversity goals gets evaluated. This year, for the first time under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the first draft of that evaluation has arrived. The review and feedback period closed on June 29, and the findings will be revised before being presented officially at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) this October in Yerevan. The final report will be the single most important document on the table at COP17.

The NBSAP Accelerator Partnership has been following this report closely since its release, and submitted feedback of its own during the review window. So far, the report’s findings only reinforce what we already knew: closing biodiversity gaps requires coordinated, peer-to-peer implementation support—support that the Accelerator is built to provide.

The Global Report on Collective Progress in the Implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is the CBD Secretariat’s evidence-based stocktake of where the world actually stands, halfway between the Framework’s adoption in 2022 and the 2030 deadline. It looks at more than 3,700 national targets, 129 national reports, and over 180 commitments from non-state actors.

Although still in draft form, the report’s conclusion is blunt: the world is not yet on track to meet the 2030 targets, the 2030 Mission, or the 2050 Goals and Vision. Ambition, action, and support are all present, but none are moving fast enough, or reaching the right people in the right places. That’s why, even in draft form, this report is already positioned as a keystone of COP17.

The draft distills its findings into six key messages highlighting the most significant gaps in collective progress. While the report will be revised following the review process, these overarching findings are expected to remain broadly the same:

1. Collective ambition isn’t enough. National targets, taken together, fall short of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s ambition, especially for Targets 14, 16, 19 and 22. Marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems remain under-represented next to terrestrial ones.
2. Progress is real but uneven, and it has to accelerate. Trends are mixed and globally more negative than positive. The report names peer-to-peer learning and regional cooperation centres as one of the clearest ways forward.
3. Means of implementation are growing, but not fast enough. Finance, capacity, and technology transfer have all increased — but not at the pace needed, particularly for Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States (LDCs and SIDS).
4. Governance and policy coherence are still barriers. Weak legislative frameworks and disconnects between the three Rio Conventions (on climate, biodiversity, desertification) are holding implementation back.
5. Governments cannot do this alone. Only a third of national targets mention the role of non-state actors, and their impact remains poorly tracked.
6. Monitoring and knowledge systems aren’t keeping up. Biodiversity data remains fragmented, with major gaps across Targets 5–9, 11–13 and 15–23.

The report is designed to assess progress rather than prescribe solutions. It lays out evidence and leaves the actions to the Parties. That’s the conversation the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership has been tracking closely and wants to be part of. Every one of the six draft findings points in the same direction: toward acceleration, coordination, and stronger implementation support. That’s squarely the space the Accelerant Framework was designed to work in.

In August, parties will meet in Nairobi, Kenya, for the seventh meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-7). Here, the draft report will be discussed as the last formal staging post before it reaches the Conference of the Parties in its final form.

In September, ahead of COP17, Parties will also convene for the Kunming Dialogue in Kunming, China, for a technical exchange and working session. This informal pre-COP dialogue will bring together around 500 people from across the biodiversity community to sit down together to work through what the Global Report means. The Kunming Dialogue will be organized as six working groups, one per key message. Across six rooms and six conversations, all will share one goal: turning each finding into a concrete plan of action. 

The final version of the Global Report, incorporating feedback from this review process, will then be presented officially at COP17 in Yerevan this October, providing the evidence base for Parties as they decide how to effectively implement the Global Biodiversity Framework by 2030.