By Amy Woolam Echeverria
Columban Central JPIC Coordinator
The global conversation about biodiversity can sound distant, filled with acronyms such as CBD, KMGBF, and COP. Yet beneath that formal language is the living fabric of the Earth: forests and rivers, soil and seeds, pollinators and birdsong, coastal waters and mountain communities. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), created at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, gives the world a shared covenant to conserve biodiversity, use it sustainably, and ensure that benefits from genetic resources are shared fairly. In an age of ecological crisis, that covenant is not only technical. It is moral, spiritual, and deeply human.
The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) turns that covenant into a roadmap. Adopted at COP15, it sets a long-term vision of living in harmony with nature by 2050 and urgent targets for 2030. Among its best-known commitments is “30x30,” the goal of conserving 30 percent of land, inland waters, and marine areas by 2030. But the framework is more than a set of numerical targets. It asks governments and societies to confront the drivers of biodiversity loss, including harmful subsidies, pollution, overconsumption, destructive land use, weak governance, and inequitable sharing of the common good.
For us as Columbans and generally people of faith, the framework can be heard as a call to right relationship. We do not see creation simply as raw material for human use; we receive it as gift, kinship, shelter, nourishment, and common home. We recognize that ecological harm often falls first on those who have done the least to cause it: Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, rural communities, small island nations, the poor, and future generations. That is why we believe biodiversity policy must be rooted in justice. Protected areas should not displace communities from lands and waters they have cared for across generations. Restoration should heal ecosystems while strengthening livelihoods, cultures, and belonging.
COP17, the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD, will take place in Yerevan, Armenia, from October 19 to 30, 2026. It will mark the first global review of collective progress toward implementing the KMGBF. This makes COP17 an accountability moment. We will be watching whether national biodiversity strategies are aligned with the framework, whether finance is moving toward repair rather than harm, whether ecosystems are being restored, and whether Indigenous rights, women, youth, and local leadership are being respected.
As faith communities, we have a distinctive role in this process. We do not need to become technical negotiators to matter. We can bring moral language, community trust, spiritual imagination, and practical action. Before COP17, we have prepared position papers, statements, webinars, and prayers. In Britain we organized school children to prepare and send letters to the government leaders who will attend COP17 reminding them of their responsibility to care for their future and the earth. During COP17, we will partner with people of other faiths to advocate for justice, organize side events, pray together, and lift up stories from affected communities. Afterward, we can help interpret what happened and sustain pressure for implementation.
For example, I recently visited Columban missionaries living and working in the Philippines. Located in the center of the country on Negros Island, Columbans initiated a reforestation and organic farm project twenty years ago. The work has evolved and grown over the years, most recently to include a formalized partnership with the Central Philippines State University, School of Forestry. This partnership is an excellent example and witness of how the Church can make the invisible, visible. That is, our Christian centeredness in hope, love, care, respect, justice, nonviolence, and dialogue is made flesh in the vision and operation of the Santuario San Columbano. Families are fed by the fruits, vegetables, rice, corn, fish, chickens, and goats that are raised on the farm. Men and women find meaningful livelihoods in working the land and as textile weavers who create all different kinds of products for sale. Young people find space for healthy recreation on the basketball court and caring for the sapling trees planted on the mountain. At the heart of it all is the Eucharist, where all creation finds a life-giving place of communion.
The road to COP17 is therefore both political and spiritual. It asks whether our global promises can become restored habitats, fairer economies, respected rights, and renewed habits of care. Hope in this work is not passive optimism. It is preparing the soil, tending the seed, and trusting that our faithful, coordinated action can still help life flourish.
