South Africa welcomes the Yerevan Pathway adopted at the biodiversity convention's seventeenth Conference of the Parties

30 October 2026

South Africa's Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has welcomed the outcomes of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Yerevan, Armenia from 19 to 30 October 2026. Parties adopted the Yerevan Pathway for Accelerated Implementation, meant to speed up work on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. On finance, the meeting set an intersessional process, and a study on broadening the contributor base will go to the Subsidiary Body on Implementation before COP18. The first global review found that fewer than half of the national targets assessed are on track for 2030. Deputy Minister Narend Singh led the South African delegation, and Malepo Phoshoko was elected to the COP Bureau. Learners from Sharpeville in Gauteng performed a biodiversity poem at the meeting.