Moving from international commitments to concrete action to halt global biodiversity loss is the urgent call being made by Chilean researchers at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, from October 19 to 30.
Aníbal Pauchard, director of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB), and Ricardo Segovia, coordinator of the IEB’s BIODATA team, are participating in discussions on invasive alien species, conservation financing, and scientific and technical tools to implement and assess global commitments. Both researchers emphasize the urgent need to strengthen the international response to the biodiversity crisis, with just four years remaining until 2030, the deadline for achieving the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
“At this convention, we participate as observers and contribute scientific evidence, working alongside different countries to find solutions to the biodiversity crisis. The main challenge of this conference is to move from agreements to effective implementation. In a way, these international agreements are already clear, and so is the diagnosis: the situation has not improved. What is needed now is action, and that requires resources,” explains Aníbal Pauchard, a professor at the University of Concepción.
As the deadline for achieving global targets draws closer, the IEB director stresses that conservation financing is essential to ensure that commitments do not remain on paper, with direct implications for Chile. “We need to determine how to finance conservation and make it truly effective,” he says.
Pauchard warns that there is growing international concern about the pace of progress toward these targets and emphasizes the role of science in decision-making. “There is global concern about how we are progressing toward these targets. We are now just four years away from 2030, and we need to make progress. There is a great deal of work to be done, and our role as scientists is to provide evidence on these issues so that countries can make informed decisions.”
A professor at UdeC and a member of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Pauchard has led research on invasive alien species, which are recognized as one of the major threats to biodiversity.
“One of the issues we are working on is how to build on the 2023 IPBES report to advance Target 6 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework on invasive alien species, and ensure that it translates into concrete action at the country level,” Pauchard explains. In this context, he highlights the launch of a new strategy on invasive alien species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which he helped develop. The initiative aims to give the international response a more practical focus. “The idea is to develop an action-oriented strategy that countries and other key stakeholders can follow to control and manage these species, both in terms of preventing their introduction and managing them once they are established,” he says.
Pauchard welcomes the fact that the momentum generated by the IPBES report and the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework continues to shape international discussions. However, he also underscores the importance of broadening the perspectives that inform decision-making. “At the IEB, we are contributing a perspective closely connected to the Global South, which differs considerably from the approaches that countries in the Global North have developed. This gives us a different perspective, which is very important for enriching the global discussion,” he says.
The urgency of implementing these commitments also highlights the need for reliable information to assess progress and identify gaps. In this area, Ricardo Segovia participated in the Latin American meeting What Are Countries Telling Us in Their Seventh National Reports? , which brought together representatives from Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador to analyze the region’s scientific and technical priorities, needs, and opportunities.
“Scientific and technical validation of these reports, based on objective and measurable indicators, has been extremely important. However, many challenges remain. These include consolidating the data systems that underpin monitoring platforms and validating their results in collaboration with scientific communities,” says Ricardo Segovia.
For the BIODATA coordinator, these gaps cannot be addressed in isolation. Although Chile is working to support these processes with scientific and technical expertise, the challenges require a regional response that can accelerate the implementation of national strategies through international cooperation. “No country can solve all the problems associated with integrating the monitoring framework on its own. Research centers can help by collaborating and sharing knowledge with one another to accelerate implementation on a solid scientific basis,” Segovia says.
Segovia emphasizes that robust monitoring frameworks would allow countries to modernize their approach to environmental challenges and open up new opportunities to link conservation with other areas of development. “Once these monitoring frameworks are in place, we will be able to measure the effectiveness of our actions and have the opportunity to go further. For example, we can move toward sustainable models supported by indicators and scientific evidence,” he says.
Segovia also highlights opportunities for cooperation among countries with different circumstances and technical capacities through the exchange of experiences and the joint development of solutions. “Even larger countries can collaborate with smaller ones by prototyping solutions and innovations for calculating indicators, implementing them in countries where this is more manageable, and then scaling them up to more challenging contexts. Everything depends on the common framework established by the indicator system and on building regional collaborative relationships,” he concludes.