Yangtze recovery
Fishing ban halts seven decades of biodiversity decline in the Yangtze River.
23 February 2026
The government has published the 7th National Report (7NR) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – its first assessment of the UK’s progress towards national biodiversity targets.
The report assesses the UK’s progress against 23 national biodiversity targets which are aligned with the 23 targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
It reveals that the UK is on track to achieve just three of its 23 targets by 2030.
The GBF targets are designed to meet the CBD’s 2030 mission – to take urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery for the benefit of people and the planet.
The targets focus on achieving the GBF’s goals; by 2050, biodiversity should be valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.
This is the first comprehensive assessment since the UK published its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) in 2024, setting out how the UK will meet its 2030 biodiversity commitments. The report has been published in advance of the 17th meeting of the CBD’s Conference of the Parties (COP17) in October 2026 and is the UK’s contribution to the global stocktake.
So far, the UK is on track to achieve three of the 23 targets by 2030. These are Target 13: Increase the sharing of benefits from genetic resources, Digital Sequence Information (DSI) and traditional knowledge; Target 17: Strengthen biosafety and distribute the benefits of biotechnology and
Target 20: Strengthen capacity-building, technology transfer and scientific and technical cooperation for biodiversity.
For 19 targets, progress is being made at an insufficient rate; progress against one target is unknown.
This initial assessment of progress is not unexpected because the GBF Targets are intentionally ambitious.
The report shows that the UK has solid foundations in place and meaningful progress is being made across almost all targets, but it clearly signals that further action is needed to ensure the UK meets all its commitments in the UK NBSAP.
In the UK, responsibility for nature and conservation is devolved to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As statutory nature advisor to the four countries, JNCC prepared and coordinated contributions to the report on their behalf, as well as the UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
Views of non-governmental stakeholders including NGOs, farmers and fisheries groups and youth were gathered through a stakeholder call for evidence. Eight stakeholder organisations provided evidence on challenges and opportunities.
‘This report is a stark wake-up call and has serious implications for our national security.
‘The UK is on track to meet just three of its 23 biodiversity targets by 2030 which equates to a 13% success rate on the commitments we have made to protect the natural world.
‘Biodiversity underpins our security: our food, our economy, handling extreme weather and homegrown business. The failure to properly safeguard our precious ecosystems and view nature as part of the solution to tackling climate change means we put our food and energy security at risk, leaving us increasingly reliant on foreign imports at a time of intense global uncertainty.
‘Ministers must dramatically scale up our level of ambition to tackle the climate and nature crisis together – you cannot solve one without the other.’
JAMES SUTTON
Co-director of the Zero Hour climate and nature campaign
The UK is fortunate in having a large amount of information about its biodiversity, collected across a broad spread of species and habitats both by professionals and by expert volunteers.
Nearly 100 organisations contribute biodiversity data to the UK Biodiversity Indicators published on JNCC’s website.
The 2024–2025 indicators were updated specifically for the purpose of reporting progress against the goals and targets of the GBF and were used in the 7th National Report.
The report describes substantial achievements, including significant financial investment and global leadership on Access and Benefit Sharing. There have also been notable advances in marine protection, sustainable fishing and biodiversity finance. However, biodiversity continues to decline.
Many biodiversity interventions – such as restoring habitats, rebuilding species populations or improving ecosystem condition – take years or decades before measurable change becomes visible. As a result, current assessments may not yet capture the full impact of policies and investments already underway.
Achieving all 23 national targets will be challenging, but it presents opportunities for innovative solutions.
The UK has already developed solutions to some of the challenges, such as addressing financial and resource constraints and filling technical and data gaps.
All four countries of the UK have recently updated or developed comprehensive biodiversity strategies or environmental improvement plans. A new UK Overseas Territories Biodiversity Strategy was launched in 2025, developed jointly by the UK Government and Governments and Administrations of the UK Overseas Territories. These strategies and plans form the basis of many of the actions included in the report and will underpin future action.
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