SBSTTA-28 and SBI-7 were the last major technical milestones before COP17 opens in Yerevan this November. Across these two weeks, the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership convened and contributed to technical discussions on non-state actor engagement, gender-responsive implementation, finance and agrobiodiversity, making the case for the accelerants needed heading into COP17.

The 28th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-28) took place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 27 July to 1 August 2026, and focused on the scientific and technical needs for implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, producing recommendations on tracking collective global progress and strengthening monitoring mechanisms. (ENB, CBD)

While Parties welcomed that action is now underway across all 23 targets of the Framework, including through non-state actors, they also noted that without a significant acceleration in collective implementation, the Framework’s goals and targets will not be met.

SBSTTA-28 was immediately followed by the Seventh meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-7), held in Nairobi from 4 to 12 August 2026 and focused on reviewing progress and strengthening the means of implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity. Discussions centered on accelerating delivery of the GBF ahead of COP17, with core topics spanning resource mobilization and financial mechanisms, digital sequence information, capacity-building, and biodiversity mainstreaming. (IIFB)

At the 7 August SBI-7 side event “From Commitment to Collective Action: The Role of Non-State Actors in Updating and Implementing NBSAPs,” opening remarks framed the stakes plainly: non-state actors are central to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and their contributions shape both national targets and national reporting. 

The panel discussion with country representatives from Indonesia, Brazil and Vanuatu surfaced a recurring tension: many countries consult stakeholders while preparing an NBSAP, but maintaining that engagement once implementation starts is often much harder. Roundtable discussions that followed, on gender, youth, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and the private sector, pushed past general commitments toward specific, structural questions:

• Where do gaps remain in decision-making power, land and resource governance, and access to finance?
• What turns one-off private sector contributions into sustained financing?
• What mechanisms actually give non-state actors real influence on decisions, not just a seat at a meeting?

The theme across all four roundtables was the same: Participation without power, resourcing or continuity cannot accelerate implementation in a meaningful way.

Eleven days earlier, on 29 July, a related SBSTTA-28 side event offered a concrete answer to that challenge. “Making NBSAP Implementation Gender-Responsive: Lessons, Tools and Country Experiences” presented two years of work under the project Accelerating Systemic Change for Gender Equality and Biodiversity Conservation through NBSAPs. The project was implemented by the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership, UNEP, UNDP and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, funded by the Government of Canada, and delivered across seven countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Comoros, Costa Rica, Eswatini, Tajikistan, Thailand and Togo.

Nearly one third of women’s employment globally sits in agriculture, forestry and fishing; women are frequently among the first to observe the effects of biodiversity loss on their households and communities. Treating that knowledge and stewardship as central to delivery, not incidental to it, is not just an equity argument. It is an effectiveness argument. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the CBD Gender Plan of Action provide the foundation for gender-responsive biodiversity action, but the framework is not translating into results fast enough.

Country representatives from Eswatini, Tajikistan and Costa Rica shared what that translation has actually required on the ground, and the project’s outputs point to a working model rather than a general aspiration:

• Institutional capacity: National gender and biodiversity champions trained and strengthened in each of the seven countries.
• Policy integration: Gender considerations embedded directly into NBSAPs and institutional frameworks, not appended as a side chapter.
• Country-led solutions: Gender-responsive biodiversity solutions linking country-identified needs to technical and financial support.
• Shared tools: A forthcoming global knowledge product distilling tools and lessons for use well beyond the seven partner countries.

As Amelia Arreguin Prado of the CBD Women’s Caucus summarized: “The work shows it’s possible to put decision text into action, but doing so depends on both dedicated technical tools and sustained financial support. The lessons generated are meant to travel far beyond the countries where they were built.” 

The project’s global knowledge product is expected to launch in the coming months, ahead of further engagement planned at COP17 in Yerevan.

Another side event at SBI-7 on 7 August hosted by the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership discussed the concept of accelerants: actions, conditions or interventions that can unlock faster and more effective biodiversity implementation. The methodology is intended to help countries identify high-leverage opportunities to advance implementation. A key message was that acceleration should not be understood as simply “doing more, faster.” It can instead mean improving coordination, changing how decisions are made, strengthening institutional arrangements, focusing on critical bottlenecks, and connecting implementation priorities with the right actors and resources.

Country representatives from Mexico, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe shared what has genuinely sped up implementation in their national contexts. Despite very different starting points, the lessons converged onto several key actions:

• Political ownership at the cabinet or presidential level gives biodiversity priorities authority beyond the environment sector.
• Mainstreaming into agriculture, infrastructure and finance ministries mobilizes far more capacity than environment ministries can alone.
• Dedicated, continuous in-country coordination by a person or team who keeps institutions connected between meetings is itself an accelerant, not a bureaucratic add-on.
• Community-based organizations are not stakeholders to be consulted, but delivery actors in their own right, a point made strongly by Vanuatu and one that carried directly into the sessions on non-state actors and gender.

The NBSAP Accelerator Partnership also convened “Bridging the Rio Conventions: Agrobiodiversity and Food System Transformation as the Ultimate Nature-Climate Connector.” The session explored how biodiversity, soil health, water and food security all sit inside one system for a farmer. While biodiversity, climate and land are negotiated as three separate conventions, agrobiodiversity is an obvious connection point. The Accelerator presented evidence of country requests for support submitted through the MatchMaking Mechanism, which are increasingly reflecting this integration. For example:

• Sierra Leone bundled safe water, food security, resilient infrastructure and gender-responsive practices into a single request.
• Fiji linked wild food biodiversity to food security, resilience, local knowledge and climate adaptation in one continuous chain.

The lesson for delivery is: if the problem is integrated, the response has to be too, further reinforcing the need to mainstream biodiversity across sectors and ministries, and include actors beyond government.

At the 6 August SBI-7 session “From NBSAP Planning to Implementation and Finance: What Enables Investments for Nature,” led by the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership, BIOFIN and PANORAMA, speakers from South Africa, Cuba, Pakistan and The Nature Conservancy made a consistent case: biodiversity finance is not simply a question of mobilizing more money. It depends on aligning finance with institutions, budget systems, and credible project pipelines. It also relies on using existing public finance more strategically, through procurement, subsidy reform and budget tagging, rather than waiting on new capital alone.

The session explored international mechanisms, including the GEF Trust Fund, Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, Kunming Biodiversity Fund, and the Accelerator’s own Accelerator Action Account (AAA) as a complementary, last-resort mechanism for high-priority gaps that remain after other matchmaking routes have been explored.

Set side by side, the Nairobi sessions make an argument bigger than either one on its own. The non-state actors panel named a structural problem around the lack of engagement beyond consultation. The gender-responsive NBSAP project showed what closing that gap actually takes: institutional capacity, embedded policy change, financing pathways, and tools built for reuse. The same logic ran through the accelerants, agrobiodiversity and finance sessions. Whether the lever is a financing mechanism, an integrated MatchMaking request, or sustained community engagement, the pattern repeats: durable implementation depends on systems and actors that stay engaged past the planning stage, not on ambition alone. The combination of participation with power, resourcing, and continuity is what yields genuine implementation capacity.

Sessions from Nairobi painted a clear picture that implementation bottlenecks are about systems, coordination, architecture, and meaningful inclusion. This is the evidence base of accelerants that the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership is bringing into COP17.