DEADLINE: EJN Biodiversity Fellowships for Journalists to Cover the UNCBD COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia

In 2022, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 launched a landmark international agreement to halt and reverse nature loss over the following decade. The Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework outlines 23 targets across topics such as sustainable use of biodiversity, species extinction, ecosystem health, benefit sharing and finance, all to be achieved by 2030. The framework also underpins the “30x30” objective to protect 30% of global land and seas by the same deadline.

Due to be held in Yerevan, Armenia, in October 2026, the CBD COP17 will be the first biodiversity COP meeting past the halfway mark to 2030’s CBD COP19. It will mark the first global stocktake of progress toward the framework, and will assess if the world is on track to meet its targets.

Time is running out to deliver meaningful biodiversity action. Today over 48,000 species are threatened with extinction, climate change is altering the environment faster than ecosystems can adapt and biodiversity loss continues to feature as one of the most severe long-term risks facing our planet today, according to the World Economic Forum.

To ensure that the CBD COP receives rich and diverse coverage worldwide—particularly in countries most impacted by its outcomes—Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN), in partnership with NABU through the SYMBIOTIC Project and the Biodiversity Media Initiative, is launching a fellowship program for journalists interested in attending and reporting on the event. This opportunity is designed to enable journalists from low- and middle-income countries to cover the negotiations, and ensure crucial findings, decisions and outcomes are available and accessible to audiences beyond conference walls.

The fellowship will strengthen and deepen journalists’ reporting on biodiversity issues and draw attention to the widespread, catastrophic and often underreported impacts of biodiversity depletion. 

Learn more and apply by June 29, 2026, 11:59 PM (Pacific/Niue).