Summary of COP17: GroundVerdict in Yerevan

We spent most of the conference talking with people and listening to them. From what we saw there, we are sure that more data on protected areas would help everyone who works in this field: their work would be more precise, it would cost less, and it would be of better quality.

What COP17 was about

The 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity opened in Yerevan on 19 October 2026. More than ten thousand delegates came to Armenia. Besides government negotiators and ministers, there were scientists, Indigenous peoples' representatives, conservation organisations and companies that build tools for conservation. Armenia's Minister of Environment, Hambardzum Matevosyan, presided. The talks were planned to end on 30 October but went on for one more day. They closed on 31 October with the Yerevan Pathway, which sets the Parties' priorities up to 2030.

This was the first COP to review the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the 23 targets the world agreed in 2022. The review found 22 of them off track. The target closest to our work is the one on protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030. On current commitments the world reaches about 26% of land and 12% of sea. More than 60 countries were urged to finish their national biodiversity plans. The Parties also adopted optional extra indicators and set up a technical expert group to help countries with their national reports.

The Parties found it hardest to agree on money. The goal of 20 billion dollars a year for nature by 2025 was missed, and the Cali Fund, set up at COP16 to collect payments from companies that use genetic data from nature, held almost nothing. COP18 will meet in Quito, Ecuador, in 2028.

Why we built GroundVerdict

Most reports on protected areas count how much land and sea is protected. To find out whether an area is managed well, you need a management effectiveness assessment such as METT, and most protected areas have never had one. The METT form is long and technical. A park usually has to pay an expert to fill it in, and the rangers and local people who know the park best are rarely asked.

With GroundVerdict a protected area can do its own METT-4 assessment. Its staff and people who live nearby answer short interviews in plain words and in their own language, and the system fills in the form from their answers. Each assessment done this way adds to the data on protected areas.

Who we met and what they told us

On the first morning we met the team behind the Smart Weed Alert Tool at New Zealand's Department of Conservation, and through them learned about the CARICOM centre for biodiversity cooperation. We talked with Ai2 about EarthRanger and OlmoEarth, its Earth data model, which work with data from satellites and sensors. We listened to the European Space Agency's WEED talk on mapping the world's ecosystems.

Nabat.ai from the United Arab Emirates asked to talk about a pilot. At EUROPARC, the federation of Europe's protected areas, a senior member of the team told us they like the idea and the product without reservation. Michael Hošek, President of the EUROPARC Federation, agreed with us that standards and procedures have to get easier for protected areas everywhere. We also talked about the many places where people have no email address or smartphone, so the tools have to be built around what people there have.

Near the end of the conference we met three people from Re:wild who work on protected area planning and on program impact. They called the idea and the product very good and said they will push in this direction.

Everyone we spoke with agreed with us that the field needs much more data on protected areas. Only about one in ten protected areas has ever had its management assessed, and without that data it is hard to decide where money and effort should go. Most of the questions we got were about how to collect the data. People told us what we think too: the tool has to be simple enough for park staff and local people to use it themselves.

Sharing what we know

Two people from our team spoke at the conference. Dr. Arsen Gasparyan, our biodiversity expert, spoke on a panel about the fungi of Armenia and the Global Strategy for Fungal Conservation. Armen Asryan, our climate and environment expert, gave a keynote on the results of an OSCE project.

What comes next

We started GroundVerdict after COP16 in Cali, Colombia, and launched it at COP17 in Yerevan. Next we will run the first pilots with protected areas.