Hundreds of representatives from the world’s most powerful industry bodies representing sectors that harm, or exploit, the natural world were present on the ground at the October nature summit in Armenia, DeSmog can reveal.
This year, the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) moved to reduce public scrutiny over corporate presence, stripping company affiliations from the 9,300-strong delegates list.
The move came amid calls for reform of multilateral summits, which have come under fire for granting too much power to obstructive polluter interests.
In-depth analysis of the COP17 delegates list shows the official number of business attendees stood at nearly 480 – a 60 percent drop compared to COP16, the previous biannual CBD summit, in the context of a 30 percent drop in overall attendance.
But specific sectors, with a strong commercial interest in biodiversity negotiations, sent large delegations to COP17, the analysis shows. Big pharma brought 16 delegates, the same number as the pesticide and agricultural technology sector. The mining industry brought 14, while the finance industry had 128 delegates at the talks, which aimed to mobilise global action to reverse the drastic global decline in plant and animal life.
In some sectors industry delegates dwarfed country delegations from the Global South, which is home to the majority of the world’s best-preserved biodiversity. For example, the 19 delegates from the oil and gas sector outnumbered the sum total of 17 delegates from Malaysia, Guyana and Haiti.
Despite the UN’s decision not to disclose company data, DeSmog cross-referenced names from previous nature summit attendees and can reveal the presence of delegates from some of the world’s largest companies that cause significant harm to biodiversity – such as oil giants Shell and TotalEnergies, biotech firms Bayer and Syngenta, and mining giants RioTinto and Vale.
The delegates list also revealed the presence of trade groups for the pesticide industry and big pharma, which have previously pushed back against attempts to regulate their sectors.
They included CropLife – which has opposed EU green farming reform – and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), which has lobbied to weaken the UN’s Cali Fund, set up at COP16 to take contributions from large companies in the private sector that benefit from nature.
As the COP17 summit closed on 30 October following two weeks of negotiations, observers expressed frustration at “diplomatic procrastination”. Key decisions were postponed on the Cali Fund, set up to channel funds from the private sector for biodiversity protection at COP16, and commitments to phase out harmful subsidies to environmentally harmful industries, such as oil, agribusiness and mining, were weakened.
Responding to DeSmog’s findings, Oscar Soria, chief executive officer of the thinktank Common Initiative said full corporate transparency was vital to multilateral negotiations – where company delay tactics can be made to disappear into diplomatic language.
“Commercial actors often have direct financial stakes in negotiation outcomes, from agricultural subsidies and biodiversity funds to target timelines,” he said. “The danger at a biodiversity COP is not simply that industry lobbyists enter the room, it’s when binding timelines become vague ambitions and phased reductions become open-ended.”
In the daunting context of biodiversity collapse – when average wildlife populations have fallen by 73 percent since the 1970s – Soria warns “the interests protected today may be the ecosystems we lose tomorrow.”
The CBD UN agency sees the business and finance community as key stakeholders in the fight to halt nature loss. It has previously told The Guardian it believes it’s “important to bring private interests to the negotiating table”. The CBD was approached for comment.
A spokesperson from the IFPMA told DeSmog its participation at COP17 was in line with its “engagement in earlier rounds of these negotiations, contributing expertise from across the research-based biopharmaceutical industry”.
Croplife told DeSmog its presence at COP17 was rooted in the fact that “the private sector holds a crucial role and responsibility in the implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, creating and deploying scalable, sustainable agriculture solutions. So naturally we would want to be part of that conversation.”
Pharmaceutical Trade Groups Sustain Presence
DeSmog’s analysis shows the overall number of business delegates decreased by 60 percent to 479 at COP17, compared to 1,261 representatives at COP16.
Overall attendance at COP17 dropped by 30 percent in Yerevan, a summit more focused on implementation of agreed actions than decision-making. The total share of business delegates halved, from five percent at COP17 compared to nine percent at COP16, which took place in Colombia in 2024.
Among the business delegates at COP17 were over 200 from big pharma, mining and banking, along with representatives from agriculture, biotech, oil and gas, and tech firms.
The financial sector was the best-represented with 128 delegates, which included 12 delegates from among the 30 banks named as the biggest financiers of deforestation in an October report. Representatives from the mining sector dropped from 20 to 16, compared to COP 16.
The pharmaceutical sector maintained its presence on the ground, dropping from 17 to 16, compared to COP16.
Due to the CBD’s suppression of company names, this is likely an underestimate, as DeSmog could only count individuals who came in trade group delegations, or those whose company affiliation was already known from previous attendance, who came with the delegations of countries, NGOs or academia.
The UN had hoped to attract between $1 and 10 billion a year into the Cali Fund, half of which is mandated to flow directly to the Indigenous and local communities that steward biodiversity.
A voluntary mechanism, it targets sectors, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and artificial intelligence, which can now mostly freely access digitised genetic code to make a range of lucrative products – everything from sweeteners to the vast majority of cancer drugs.
Based on their 2025 performance, the top 15 pharmaceutical companies would have contributed $756 million if they had contributed at the indicative rates agreed in 2024, analysis from the research group Zero Carbon Analytics found.
But two years since its inception, the fund, whose creation was ratified by 196 countries at COP16, has just over $10,000 pledged by three small companies.
In the run up to COP17, the leading international pharma lobby group IFPMA – which sent seven delegates to Yerevan – called for a “radical rethink” of the fund, branding contribution rates (set at 0.1 percent of revenue or one percent of profit), “premature”, “without any rational analysis”, and “commercially unrealistic”.
Eighteen representatives of the pesticides and biotechnology sector also attended COP17, including a delegate from Syngenta, who was involved in discussions around the Cali Fund, observers told DeSmog.
During negotiations at COP17, key decisions that would finalise and operationalise the fund, such as which companies should pay in, and contribution rates, were pushed back to 2028.
Industry also appeared to announce a rival funding scheme at the Yerevan summit, with the launch of an “opt-in” Biodiversity Foundation initiative by German multinational Bayer, an IFPMA member, which had eight staffers present.
“I would have expected industry to put its energy and resources into making the mechanism, which we collectively agreed, work,” said June Rubis, a Cali Fund steering group member.
“Compared with previous years, I think industry is engaging much more actively and in greater technical detail. But I also think we need to ask what that engagement is producing.”
Bayer told DeSmog its initiative was “explicitly not intended to replace the Cali Fund”, which it “welcomes”. They added that the “limited funding” mobilized for the fund to date “is not a sign of a lack of willingness of the private sector, but rather a reflection of unresolved legal and practical challenges”.
A spokesperson from the IFPMA told DeSmog its “participation at COP17 was in line with the IFPMA’s engagement in earlier rounds of these negotiations, contributing expertise from across the research-based biopharmaceutical industry”.
It added: “Being part of these discussions matters because we want a system that works for biodiversity and continues to support research into new medicines and vaccines.”
A spokesperson for Syngenta said it was represented by one delegate as part of the International Chamber of Commerce delegation: “We support the idea of the Cali fund,” they said. “In implementation it must enable research and development in agriculture for delivery of higher yields with lower impact. We are fully committed to fair and equitable benefit-sharing, including resolving issues affecting the operation of the Cali Fund.”
Subsidy Reform Postponed
The politically charged topic of subsidy reform was high up on the agenda at COP17.
Public money flows to nature-destroying industries at an estimated $2.6 trillion per year, or 2.5 percent of global GDP. It can take the form of tax breaks, research funding, and subsidising fuel costs for consumers.
In a landmark agreement made at COP16 in 2024, signatory states to the CBD had agreed to cut harmful subsidies by $500 billion by 2030. But a review concluded in Yerevan failed to reaffirm a previously agreed phase-out deadline of 2030.
The text governing subsidy reform was also weakened at the summit, where several leading representatives of impacted sectors were present on the ground.
Sixteen representatives attended from the oil and gas industry – the leading cause of climate change, which scientists name as the third most significant driver of biodiversity loss.
The oil and gas sector is the top recipient of subsidy at $1.6 trillion per year, according to the 2024 EarthTrack report. Fossil fuel firms represented at the summit included TotalEnergies and Petrobas, both of which brought three delegates, and Shell, Chevron, Enbridge and BP who sent one, analysis shows.
All together there were 30 delegates from agribusiness – including pesticide, fertilizer, and food processing companies. This sector is the second-largest recipient of subsidy at between $600 and $610 billion a year.
The UK Business & Biodiversity Forum (UK BFF) brought a representative from JP Morgan, which financed “agro-risk” commodities associated with deforestation in tropical forests to the tune of $11 billion via loans and underwriting in the past 10 years, according to a 2026 report.
Jannes Stoppel from Greenpeace believes domestic lobbying will have taken place prior to the summit.
“Some countries are heavily influenced by big industry interests,” said Stoppel, a senior policy advisor for biodiversity and climate. “Certain governments seem afraid of agricultural lobbyists and farmers going out on the street with tractors to demonstrate against any attempt to shift harmful subsidies towards more ecological perspectives.”
A representative for TotalEnergies said its representatives were “in no way involved in international negotiations between states”.
They added: “The presence of three environmental experts at COP17 enabled them to follow the discussions, exchange views on biodiversity-related issues and keep abreast of international work. Preserving biodiversity and ecosystems is an important issue particularly given the nature of TotalEnergies’ presence in many regions around the world.”
A spokesperson for the UK BFF said it is a community interest company dedicated to “supporting UK businesses to understand and integrate biodiversity into their activities and decision making”. They added: “All businesses play a critical role in making sure society delivers the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.”
Transparency Concerns
DeSmog analysed the COP17 delegates list for attendance by “industries of interest”, namely those which are known to exploit the natural world and/ or contribute to biodiversity loss.
Of the 420 delegates identified as ‘industries of interest”, two thirds came in under the UN’s business and industry groups (mixed and sector-specific), and the rest attended with NGOs, governments, multilateral institutions, governments or academic institutions.
The delegates also included representatives of 35 major corporations such as pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson, British American Tobacco and oil giant Chevron, which DeSmog was able to find by cross referencing delegate names with previous COP lists.
For the COP17 summit the CBD removed company affiliations data from the participant list, showing only the name, job title and delegation.
When queried, a representative for the CBD told DeSmog “this is the way lists are now being issued” without further explanation. The CBD did not subsequently respond to repeated requests for comment.
It’s the first time since 2004 that a CBD summit delegates list has been edited in this way, for all the years that DeSmog was able to locate a public list between 2002 to 2026.
This backslide on transparency stands in sharp relief to the UNFCCC, the UN body responsible for overseeing climate negotiations, which offers increased oversight in recent years in response to civil society pressure, providing not only company affiliation but information on who funded delegates’ attendance.
The removal of company data by the CBD secretariat meant DeSmog could only identify staff who had also attended COP15 and COP16 – not any new staff that were sent this year – meaning overall numbers are likely to be underestimates.
It also means that any attendees from start-up tech sectors like artificial intelligence firms – a sector which is expected to pay into the Cali Fund, and positions itself as a vital biodiversity metrics tool – would not have been captured by our analysis, which found tech companies delegates had dropped from 18 to 3, with no sector leaders present.
While company affiliation was missing from the public list, the CBD clearly holds this data as company and trade group names were printed on delegate badges in Yerevan.
Marcus Filardi from the advocacy organisation ETC group – which works on human rights and environmental justice – said the suppression of corporate names set a worrying precedent. “With this new practice of not disclosing affiliations we are now flying blind,” he told DeSmog. “Public disclosure of the affiliations of all the participants at CBD negotiations is vital for transparency and accountability.”
All named companies and industry groups were contacted for comment.
