UN Biodiversity Summit Gets Under Way in Yerevan With Just One of 23 Nature Targets in the Top Band, as Zero Presses Portugal on Restoration Money

Governments meet in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October for COP17, the UN biodiversity conference. They arrive with a UN report warning that the world will miss its 2030 nature targets unless implementation "accelerates rapidly". Portugal brings a revised national strategy, a draft nature restoration plan and a national report filed almost five months late. Zero, the environmental association, wants the government to push for an ambitious deal and set an example at home.

A sobering half-time report

The State of Biodiversity Action report, launched by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on 15 October, is the first global assessment of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Adopted in December 2022, it set 23 targets for 2030, among them protecting 30 percent of land and sea. The report rests on what countries had filed by a 7 March 2026 cut-off: national reports from 129 Parties (66 percent of the 196), national targets from 162, and updated national biodiversity strategies and action plans from only 89, or 45 percent.

The summary finds that none of the 23 targets presents "a fully positive picture". Its scorecard puts only Target 8 (limiting the impact of climate change on biodiversity and building resilience) in its top band for progress. Target 18, on reforming subsidies that harm nature, is among those rated lowest. Zero reads it as the world falling short on 22 of 23. COP17 is the first time the Parties review that progress together.

Where Portugal stands

The government revised the Estratégia Nacional de Conservação da Natureza e Biodiversidade 2030 (ENCNB 2030, the national nature and biodiversity strategy) in Council of Ministers Resolution 125/2026, approved on 30 April and published on 17 June. It now aligns with the Kunming-Montreal framework and the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (EU) 2024/1991. The Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas (ICNF, the nature and forests institute) coordinates it, but the resolution makes spending on its measures dependent on the budget each public body has available.

CBD records show Portugal filed its seventh national report and the revised strategy on 24 July 2026. The reporting deadline was 28 February, so neither made the cut-off for the global report. Its national targets were filed in February 2025.

On 28 August the government sent Brussels its draft Plano Nacional de Restauro da Natureza (PNRN, the national nature restoration plan), saying it was the third member state to do so (our report at the time). The European Commission has six months to comment, and the government expects to finish the final plan by August 2027.

What Zero is asking for

In a statement on 18 October, Zero recognised the effort but said Yerevan's diagnosis "also applies in part to the country" (our translation). It wants Portugal, within the EU's position, to press for an ambitious result on finance and on reforming harmful subsidies. At home, it wants:

• a significant, traceable multi-year budget for restoration;
• a public inventory of subsidies that harm biodiversity;
• quantified targets for strict protection at sea.

Zero also listed weaknesses in the draft restoration plan. It says the 30 million euros set aside in the 2027 State Budget (fuel tax revenue routed through the Fundo Ambiental, the Environmental Fund) falls far short of the 500 million euros a year announced. It puts the plan's marine restoration target for 2030 at about 3.4 hectares and says only 2.7 percent of the forest restoration effort is scheduled by 2030. It adds that the plan itself admits there is no national inventory of environmentally harmful subsidies. Zero's president, Francisco Ferreira, will attend the second week.