Sweden Without Action Plan for Three-Year-Old UN Agreement – Promised for 2025
The Kunming-Montréal Framework was adopted at CBD COP15 in Montréal in 2022. By COP16, all countries were to develop an action plan on how to implement the targets included in the biodiversity framework, including the target of protecting 30 per cent of nature in the oceans and on land. Three years later, Sweden still does not have such an action plan.
Text: Arvid Wicklander Mellgren
The Kunming-Montréal Framework is a set of targets for preserving biodiversity. It includes the much-publicised target that 30% of the world’s nature, both marine and terrestrial, should be protected by 2030. In Sweden, approximately 16% of our marine area is protected.
When an agreement was reached at COP15 in autumn 2022, it was also decided that all countries would submit an action plan (NBSAP) to the UN to achieve the targets. These were to be submitted to the next conference on biological diversity, CBD COP 16, in autumn 2024. Many countries failed to draw up an action plan in time, including Sweden. Instead, Sweden submitted its already decided national environmental goals.
Torbjörn Ebenhard is a research leader at SLU Centre for Biological Diversity and has also served on the board of WWF Sweden. He is critical of the work on the Kunming-Montreal Framework goals in Sweden.
‘They consider that they have submitted half, that is, they have submitted the goals but not the strategy.
That’s a terrible thing to say, we haven’t done anything since Montréal. It’s embarrassing,” Torbjörn Ebenhard told Deep Sea Reporter.
Climate and Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari (L) has previously said that a Swedish NBSAP would be developed in 2025, but this has not yet happened. (now being January 2026).
In autumn 2023, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency presented a draft action plan. In February 2025, the Environmental Objectives Committee also presented its proposals in this area in a government report. The government has said that it has been waiting for these to be finalised and that it has been working on the action plan since they were completed.
Sweden is not alone in not having submitted its action plan, but most European countries have submitted theirs.
‘If you talk about being the best in class and achieving your goals, then you really have to make an effort,’ says Torbjörn Ebenhard.
In October 2026, COP 17 will take place in Yerevan. Before then, countries must submit a ‘National Report’ detailing how far they have come in implementing the action plan.
Deep Sea Reporter has contacted Climate and Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari, who has declined to be interviewed or comment.
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