Highlights and images for 23 October 2025

“Am I attending a Conference of the Parties (COP) or a scientific and technical body?” queried a delegate at the end of another busy day at the 27th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA 27). The question highlighted concerns that political considerations often find their way into SBSTTA’s deliberations, removing focus from the scientific aspects of the work of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that the subsidiary body is mandated to address. While these concerns are not new, deliberations at SBSTTA 27 reinforced them, with some delegates stressing that this issue needs to be addressed.

Delegates considered conference room papers (CRPs) on invasive alien species (IAS) and biodiversity and health in an afternoon plenary session.

Want to dig deeper into today's talks? Read the full Earth Negotiations Bulletin daily report.

On IAS, delegates discussed, among other things:

• the connection between climate change and IAS;
• collaborative approaches, including strengthening cross-sectoral and cross-border collaboration, and collaboration with the Inter-Agency Liaison Group on IAS;
• developing training materials for a list of emerging tools; and
• a list of requests to the Secretariat for further work.

On biodiversity and health, provisions "taking note of" or "welcoming" the Nexus Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement were bracketed following a Party’s opposition.

Delegates further discussed provisions, among others, on:

• the timeline of the development of indicators, metrics, and progress measurement tools on biodiversity and health;
• the provision of financial resources to support the implementation of the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health; and
• the One Health approach.

The rest of the day was devoted to deliberations in contact groups, which met in the morning and evening to discuss:

• the global review of collective progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF);
• the strategic review and analysis of the programmes of work under the CBD in the context of the GBF;
• risk assessment and risk management of living modified organisms;
• biodiversity and climate change; and
• areas of potential further work in the context of the GBF.