Theiva Lingam, Friends of the Earth Malaysia
During the opening session of SBI 7 on 4 August 2026, Cuba drew attention to the serious difficulties in implementing the KMGBF, highlighting among others, how the long-standing economic, commercial and financial blockade restricts the country’s access to resources and international support. This intervention underscores the need to take seriously the specific circumstances and constraints faced by countries under such conditions when assessing progress and designing implementation support.
At the outset, countries agreed to the KMGBF because they recognised the urgent need to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Yet without adequate financial, technical and other means of implementation for developing countries, this agreement risks becoming little more than a piece of paper, disconnected from realities on the ground.
These challenges are particularly acute for countries subject to trade blockades, economic sanctions, occupation, or prolonged war and conflict (impacted countries). Without the removal of these constraints, or the provision of clear biodiversity-related exemptions, implementation of biodiversity commitments cannot proceed on a level playing field. The situation in many of these impacted countries demonstrate how external economic and geopolitical pressures may obstruct conservation efforts and undermine progress towards the goals and targets of the KMGBF.
This is a question of equity, not only of technical capacity. Biodiversity conservation requires access to finance, scientific exchange, laboratory equipment, conservation technologies, monitoring systems, and long-term international cooperation. When sanctions and blockades interfere with the very agreements meant to reverse biodiversity destruction, expecting equal performance without equal means is neither just nor realistic.
Developed countries, which have long benefited from industrial growth and intensive global resource extraction and use, bear an overwhelming historical and ongoing responsibility for global ecological breakdown. They must take concrete action to enable equitable implementation of global biodiversity commitments – removing barriers that impede KMGBF implementation and environmental cooperation, ensuring access to finance, technology and capacity-building, and supporting biodiversity-related exemptions for countries under blockades, sanctions, occupation or war. Governments that have created or maintained these political and economic barriers must dismantle them, while the rest of the international community must refuse to remain complicit in allowing the same to continue.
Impacted countries cannot realistically be expected to meet global biodiversity targets while being denied the resources, technologies, and partnerships needed to achieve them. Concrete measures are urgently needed, including dedicated financial support, unhindered access to scientific and conservation tools, and strengthened international cooperation. If governments are truly committed to reversing biodiversity loss, they must confront and remove the political and economic barriers that make implementation impossible for some countries.
Biodiversity conservation must be grounded in equity and justice.