Efforts to raise hundreds of billions of dollars to preserve the world's oceans, forests, rivers, lakes and other parts of the natural world have fallen short ahead of a key U.N. summit on biodiversity.
The yawning gap between the stated ambition of nations to protect biodiversity and what money has been raised will be a central topic in Yerevan, Armenia, when the biodiversity conference, known as COP17, gets started on Monday. The nearly two-week event, scheduled to end Oct. 30, is a chance for nearly 200 countries that are part of the treaty to take stock of their progress on 23 global targets after agreeing to a historic deal crafted in Montreal in 2022. The United States is not a party to the treaty.
