COP17 in Yerevan: Armenia Hosts the World for Nature, Day by Day

Day 1, 15 October: the world’s nature report card

The UN launched the first global assessment of progress towards the 2030 nature targets: nearly 90 per cent of countries have set national targets, but fewer than half of the targets assessed are on track.

On Thursday 15 October, four days before COP17 opened, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, launched State of Biodiversity Action at a press conference in the Blue Zone of the Meridian Expo, the area open to accredited participants. The Convention on Biological Diversity describes the report as the first global assessment of collective progress in implementing the Kunming-Montreal framework. Guterres was joined by Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention; Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme; and Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s Minister of Environment and the incoming President of COP17. I had come to the Meridian Expo that day to collect my press badge, and at about twenty to five the Secretary-General walked into the press room past my camera.

The findings were mixed. According to the Convention’s press release, nearly 90 per cent of countries have set national biodiversity targets, close to 60 per cent have national biodiversity strategies and action plans, and more than 70 per cent have submitted national reports. Yet fewer than half of the targets assessed are on track. Guterres said that if current commitments are met, only 26 per cent of terrestrial and 12 per cent of marine ecosystems will be protected by 2030, against a global target of 30 per cent of land and sea. The report also finds that the milestone of 20 billion US dollars a year in international biodiversity finance, set for 2025, was likely not met.

The speakers located the main difficulty outside environment ministries. Schomaker said that progress lagged where ministries such as finance, agriculture and energy had to act, and added: “Finance is there.” Matevosyan said that biodiversity “cannot remain the responsibility of environmental ministries alone”. The press release makes the same point: the targets that depend on business, consumption, harmful incentives and finance are among the furthest behind.

The report is the starting point for the global review that COP17 must carry out. Its message is that most countries have now set targets for nature, but that meeting them requires whole governments, not environment ministries alone. The full report is available at cbd.int/globalreview/report2026.

Afterwards I walked through the Armenia pavilion, which presents the country through the letters of the Armenian alphabet, ancient rock carvings (petroglyphs) shown in neon light, a waterfall hall and a stone carved like a vishap, the kind of ancient “dragon stone” found in the Armenian highlands.

Day 2, 16 October: the Leaders’ Summit

Leaders from around the world met at the Meridian Expo for the Leaders’ Summit, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described how his 2018 order to stop illegal logging met strong resistance and how many former loggers later turned to tourism.

On Friday 16 October, three days before COP17 opened, heads of state and government met at the Meridian Expo for the Leaders’ Summit on Biodiversity, which had opened with a ceremony the evening before. Among the leaders welcomed to Yerevan were the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres; the Presidents of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Emomali Rahmon and Sadyr Japarov; and the Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kobakhidze. My day began before dawn at Stepan Shahumyan Square, where journalists collected their summit badges and boarded shuttles to the venue. From the courtyard I photographed the heads of delegation on the red carpet and, at about ten, the family photo in front of a mountain backdrop.

In the plenary hall the whole room stood as a choir sang the Armenian national anthem, and the opening programme continued with films and a folk ensemble. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan then gave the opening address, in Armenian, and took Armenia’s forests as his example. After independence, he recalled, there was not enough electricity, gas or fuel, and people heated their homes mostly with wood; in Yerevan even the trees in streets and parks were cut down. In 2018, one of his first orders as Prime Minister was to stop illegal logging. The order met strong resistance in Tavush, his native province and one of the most forested regions of Armenia, where many people lived off the forest. In Haghartsin, the village where many of his relatives live, even many of them would not listen. One or two years later, he said, many former loggers had found other work: the same vehicles that had carried felled wood were taking tourists to the forests and the mountains. He presented it as a case in which the people who once cut the forest now cooperate with nature.

Speaking after him, Guterres told the leaders: “Halfway to 2030, Yerevan is our moment of accountability.” Pashinyan’s account illustrates, at the scale of one province, the link between protecting nature and offering people a living. The full address, in Armenian, is on the Government of Armenia’s YouTube channel.

Day 3, 18 October: the youth summit

The Global Youth Summit for Biodiversity, which brought about 400 young people to Yerevan State University, closed on the day of COP17’s opening ceremony.

On Sunday 18 October, the day of COP17’s opening ceremony, Yerevan State University hosted the second and final day of the Global Youth Summit for Biodiversity. The summit, held on 17 and 18 October as a parallel meeting of COP17, brought together about 400 young people aged 16 to 35 from Armenia and abroad. It was jointly convened by the COP17 Armenian Presidency, the Youth Organizations Union of Armenia and the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. According to the Convention, its purpose was to present young people as implementers of the Kunming-Montreal framework, to unite their voices and to prepare them for COP17. It was organised “for youth by youth”, in English with interpretation into Armenian, Spanish and French.

According to Armenpress, the first day dealt with the social and ecological crisis, with group workshops on policy, forests and land, fresh water, food systems, climate and biodiversity, culture and traditional knowledge, and health. It said the second day would turn to the role of culture, art and storytelling in conservation, to turning international commitments into practical steps, and to initiatives led by young people. At the summit’s opening on 17 October, the Rector of Yerevan State University, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, announced that the university, the American University of Armenia and 16 partner universities would run 40 events in the COP17 Green Zone.

I arrived on Sunday morning and began in front of the statues of Mesrop Mashtots and Sahak Partev, outside the university. In the hall, a group reported on its theme, biodiversity and climate, and on the problems in its members’ communities that concern both. A GYBN policy coordinator then spoke about the role of young people and of their allies, among them indigenous peoples, local communities and women, and reminded the hall that the Convention has 196 Parties: almost every country in the world, except the United States and the Holy See. According to the Convention’s list of Parties, the United States signed the treaty but never ratified it, and the Holy See has done neither.

The evening before, in Freedom Square, by the Opera, cut-out leopards bore the logos of the Ministry of Environment, the City of Yerevan and WWF, and the line “They’re coming back”. The same words are the slogan of a WWF Armenia campaign, posted on Instagram on 15 October, which links the return of the leopard to the conference. The summit, for its part, presented young people not only as the generation that will live with the 2030 targets, but as participants in meeting them.

Day 4, 18 October: young voices

This second report from the youth summit of 18 October lets the participants explain why they came and what they expect COP17 to do for Armenia.

Outside the hall on 18 October, I asked participants of the Global Youth Summit for Biodiversity two questions: why they had come, and what COP17 can do for Armenia. Many of those who answered were 16 or 17 years old, from Yerevan and from the provinces: Tashir in Lori, Goris in Syunik, Yeghegnadzor in Vayots Dzor and the village of Lernagog in Armavir. As many of them are minors, they are named here by their first names.

Their reasons were concrete. Narek, 17, from Yerevan, said he expected real action, not just promises. Aren, Yelena and Monika came from Tashir: Aren to grow his environmental knowledge and try to make a change in his community, Yelena to learn what COP17 is, and Monika for new knowledge, new connections and friendships. Timofey, from Lernagog, said that villages must not be left behind. Alex, 16, from Yeghegnadzor, said he believes the Amulsar mine will affect the rivers that flow into Lake Sevan. According to Armenpress, the mine’s launch was marked at a ceremony on 10 October attended by the Prime Minister, who said that concerns and warnings had been voiced, including about the contamination of Lake Sevan, but that the government was convinced those risks did not exist. Alex’s view is reported here as his own.

Inside, speakers explained how young people take part in the negotiations. A speaker from the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), one of the summit’s conveners, said that no country is likely to agree with all of the youth priorities, so the network looks for a champion for each of them. The rules of the conference explain why: observers, including youth groups, may speak in plenary for one to three minutes, time permitting, but a proposal from an observer goes forward only if at least one Party supports it. David Cooper, former Acting Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, told the participants that GYBN had helped give young people a voice in the Kunming-Montreal framework.

The summit was also international. Delegates from Africa, filmed on the steps of the university as they went live, thanked Armenia for hosting them, and a student from the Republic of the Congo told me that the people here are very kind. Taken together, the interviews suggest that for some of the young people from Armenia’s provinces COP17 is less an abstract negotiation than a question about their own rivers, villages and communities.

Day 5, 19 October: Armenia presides

COP17 opened, Armenia’s Minister of Environment, Hambardzum Matevosyan, was elected President of the conference, and Armenia and Colombia presented their coalition for endangered species.

On Monday 19 October, COP17 formally opened with a plenary, a meeting of all the Parties, at the Meridian Expo. The COP16 presidency, held by Colombia, handed over to Armenia; its representative described biodiversity as not merely an environmental concern but the foundation of water and food security. The plenary then elected Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s Minister of Environment, as President of COP17. His term lasts two years, until a successor is elected at COP18. Because Armenia is a Party to the Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, he also presides over the twelfth meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol, on biosafety, and the sixth meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol, on the fair sharing of the benefits from genetic resources.

In his first address as President, Matevosyan noted that with 196 Parties the Convention brings together nearly the entire international community. The gavel, he said, is not merely a symbol of authority but a call to guide the collective work towards meaningful results. The presidency chairs the negotiations and leads the work of the conference until the next meeting.

In the afternoon, Armenia and Colombia presented CARES, the Coalition of Action to Recover Endangered Species: a coalition of governments that aims to accelerate the conservation and recovery of threatened species and to turn internationally agreed targets into practical steps that reduce the risk of extinction. Colombia’s speaker cited two species on which the country has already worked, the Orinoco crocodile and the blue-billed curassow. At the press conference I asked Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Environment, Aram Meymaryan, whether neighbouring countries would join, since leopards cross borders. He replied that Armenia would be happy if they did, because nature does not recognise borders and Armenia lies at a crossroads for migratory birds and mammals, and added that a new leopard had been spotted in Armenia a few days earlier, probably from a neighbouring country.

At the evening press conference, the President announced that the caretakers of a community conservation area had recorded a new leopard twice on camera traps, on 9 and 13 October, and that it had been named Aghasi, after the caretaker who captured the images. The news matters because the population is very small: at the Leaders’ Summit on 16 October, the Prime Minister estimated the number of Caucasian leopards in Armenia at six to seven, Public Radio of Armenia reported. Matevosyan also said that as President he would work for an open, transparent and inclusive dialogue. At the same press conference Schomaker said that what is needed now is to close the gap between what is known and what is done.

Day 6, 21 October: the pavilion of the young

The Armenia pavilion hosted a UNICEF session on climate and biodiversity education, which showed a new cartoon about Lake Sevan, and a meeting between the President of COP17 and young delegates.

On Wednesday 21 October the Armenia pavilion hosted a UNICEF session on climate and biodiversity education and a speech by the President of COP17 to young people. That day, in the Green Zone at the Karen Demirchyan Complex, the children’s corner was showing a new cartoon for the first time: Sevanik, in which a small blue creature with no family finds an egg in the reeds of Lake Sevan, adopts it as its family, and sees a flamingo chick hatch from it. That afternoon, UNICEF’s session showed the same film before its panel discussion began.

Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, Anna Babajanyan, said that Lake Sevan is not only a national symbol but an ecosystem that needs care, just like Sevanik. She set out the path drawn by Armenia’s school standards: a child should learn to recognise ecosystems by the end of primary school, to take part in planning environmental action by the end of basic school, and to initiate and carry out such action by the end of high school. The path, she said, leads from knowing, to taking part, to leading. UNICEF Armenia’s head of education said that UNICEF considers the climate crisis a crisis of children’s fundamental rights. Arevik, a researcher and a partnerships lead at the UN in Armenia, noted that in 2024 extreme weather disrupted the schooling of about 242 million students, roughly one in seven.

Three young delegates then joined the panel: Paulina; Fernanda, of the Mexican delegation; and Ruben, of UNICEF’s delegation. Fernanda said that, growing up, she had seen polluted lakes slowly drying up, and that she had begun to organise clean-ups in parks and to plant trees. Paulina argued that education systems should give priority to practical projects, time outdoors and mental health, and concluded: “if we help nature, nature helps us.” After the session, at the Armenia Tree Project stand, I met Narek Ohanyan, a climate and environmental researcher and activist, at COP17 with UNICEF’s global delegation. His path began at eleven, in a small eco club in his community, where he learned that his region, Ararat, is turning into desert.

Later, the President of COP17 addressed the young people from a stage in the pavilion. It was, he said, his first speech in that venue, and for him the grand opening of that part of the Armenian pavilion. Meaningful participation, he said, means that young people’s views are heard and their proposals considered. For their generation, 2030 is not a distant political deadline but a defining period of their lives. He shared what he called a small secret, that the negotiations on the global review are not always smooth, and said he thought the young people could help the presidency and the special envoy to push the agenda forward, so that COP17 ends with a proper document on all the issues of the global review, under the name of the Yerevan Pathway. He made one request: “Continue to challenge us. Bring forward your ideas, ask difficult questions, and hold decision-makers accountable for the commitments we make.”

The Armenia pavilion

Hrachya Keshishyan, the man behind the concept and creation of Armenia’s national pavilion in the Blue Zone, explained how it was built and what it shows.

The Armenia pavilion is Armenia’s national exhibition space in the Blue Zone of COP17. On 21 October I walked through it with Hrachya Keshishyan, the man behind its concept and creation, who spoke in Armenian. He stressed that the pavilion was the work not of one person but of a large team, in which the project’s artist proposed reproducing the bird-letters, the Armenian alphabet drawn as birds. The inspiration, he said, was Armenian culture, which is closely bound to nature, and the bird-letters show how nature and writing can be honoured together. “The whole pavilion is Armenia in a small model,” he said, “because it is the breath of Armenia.”

The entrance wall carries the word Armenia in English and Armenian on a chart comparing the world’s alphabets, with the bird-letters on lit panels. Inside, animal figures rise on tall pedestals among grasses: a bull with goats, a wild goat and a bird. According to its label, the bird, “Between Earth and Sky”, is a replica of a bronze from Lchashen, in the Lake Sevan basin, dated to the fifteenth to fourteenth centuries BC; the original is in the collection of the History Museum of Armenia. The label explains that in ancient belief systems birds often symbolised the connection between heaven and earth. Further on, a pulpulak, the traditional Armenian drinking fountain, is set into the tops of hexagonal columns, and a red stone shaped like the ancient vishap stones of the Armenian mountains stands before a lake on the screens.

Asked where in Armenia he would choose to stay forever, Keshishyan named Yerevan and the view from his balcony, the nature of Syunik and of Tavush, where Aghavnavank is his place to rest, and Lake Sevan: “We have no sea, but our sea is Sevan.” The pavilion is also a working space: on 21 October it hosted the education session and the President’s meeting with young people reported above.

The way in, and the Green Zone

On 21 October the conference shuttles carried participants from Republic Square to the Blue Zone at the Meridian Expo, and others ran all day to the Green Zone at the Karen Demirchyan Complex, which had a zone for children and education, and a carpet loom and a tuff panel at which visitors could try the crafts themselves.

On the morning of Wednesday 21 October, at a bus stop in Yerevan, Christine and her mother, Mrs Anita, invited me to taste their zhingyalov hats, the herb-filled flatbread of Artsakh. The COP17 shuttles left from the pickup and drop-off centre at Republic Square and travelled to the Meridian Expo, the venue of the Blue Zone, under police escort. On the way I reported what delegations from abroad had told me: almost all had a very good impression of Armenia, of its buildings and antiquities, and many participants said they were also very pleased with the food, the organisation, the young people and the security, although local residents spoke of congestion and traffic jams. At the entrance of the Meridian Expo only COP17 participants are let through; at registration their photographs are taken for the badge that gives them the right to enter, and in the registration hall young Armenian volunteers directed participants to the next floor.

One of the young volunteers, Narek, said that he was glad Armenia had found itself at the centre of attention, that he wanted to help with all his strength, and that Armenia could voice its environmental problems. At the Artsakh stand, cooks prepared zhingyalov hats. The dough, one of them explained, is only flour, salt and water; it is opened, filled, given a little oil, salt and pepper, closed, and cooked on the griddle without oil. In her view, what matters most is that it is served with love.

Shuttles also ran all day to the Green Zone at the Karen Demirchyan Complex. There, Karina, a volunteer at a zone dedicated to children and education, showed its exhibits: a wall of the sponsors and organisations that took part; drawings on nature and Armenian culture by students of the Zakarian Art School; a tree on which guests could write a wish related to nature; board games on preserving nature and on energy, among them Energy Poly Pole, a version of Monopoly about energy; and a series on the preservation of Lake Sevan for teachers, parents and students. A large map of the capital, partly coloured in, carried the line “More green on the map, more nature in our city”; it is the work of Pes-Pes, which makes colouring books related to Armenian culture. Beside it were famous works by Armenian painters, among them Yervand Kochar, Vardges Sureniants and Martiros Saryan. The zone was organised for the conference period only, Karina explained, but its practices and activities are intended to continue for a while longer.

At the Megerian Carpet stand, Mrs Anna showed me how a carpet knot is tied: the thread is wound round one strand, the strand beside it is taken at once, the short end is passed through the middle of the two and pulled down, and the cut is made with the sharp part. At the tuff panel of the Tovmasyan Charity Foundation, the carving master Arayik Tavakalyan, who has worked for some fifteen years and more, in wood, bronze and metal as well as in stone, coached me at the chisel; at that point, he said, the cut goes three centimetres deep. Everyone helps with the panel, he added: some seven or eight hundred people had already worked on it.

Day 7, 22 October: rangers and art

A side event pointed out how few rangers take part in COP17, the interpretation at the conference included Armenian, and a Yerevan foundation presented music, dance and audiovisual performances on a stage it curated for the event.

On Thursday 22 October, a side event at the Meridian Expo examined what one of its speakers called the ranger blind spot. Hannah Timmins, of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and the Universal Ranger Support Alliance, asked the room to stand, then everyone who was not a ranger to sit down. Later in her talk she said: “Out of fifteen thousand delegates, we’re aware of less than ten rangers.” Rangers, she explained, protect not only biodiversity but also watersheds, pollinators, carbon sinks and culture. The target known as 30x30, conserving 30 per cent of the world’s land and sea by 2030, requires an estimated 1.5 million additional rangers; yet of 45 global governance documents audited, only five contained a quality reference to them, and no CBD document mentioned them in policy. “If a workforce is not named,” she quoted Valerie Hickey of the World Bank, “it cannot be planned for.”

On 19 October the Minister of Environment, Hambardzum Matevosyan, had announced that caretakers of a community conservation area recorded a new leopard on camera traps on 9 and 13 October. On 23 October, a staff member of the Environmental Protection and Mining Inspection Body told me that it has representatives in almost every region, that its inspectors carry out checks periodically, and that scientists install cameras during their field work. The blind spot Timmins described is nonetheless global, and rangers’ work needs funding.

That day Garo Kotchounian, co-founder of Aypoupen, joined me at the conference. In the plenary hall, delegates were negotiating a draft text paragraph by paragraph; in another hall, Garo went through the interpretation channels: the six official languages of the United Nations, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese, and, on channel seven, Armenian, the language of the host country.

The COP17 Performance Program, a daily ten-minute performance of music, sound, movement and audiovisual work, was dedicated that day to the composer Avet Terterian. Beside its stage I interviewed Artur Atayan, a musician and art scholar, of the Hosq foundation, an educational and cultural foundation in Yerevan that works to develop Armenia’s creative industries. In the first year of its art labs, Notations and Etude, Hosq held a festival around Terterian’s Third Symphony. This year, he said, a two-day festival on the theme of rituals gathered 111 artists from 27 countries, more than half of them Armenian, with interactive works in every room of the State Philharmonic’s small building on Abovyan Street. Hosq also runs workshops for children in Armenia’s regions.

At the end of the day, before the conference’s orange backdrop, Garo asked me what had been new for me. My answer was the trees: bare stretches along a river road in Syunik, where, it seemed clear to me, trees had been cut, and one or two young people I had spoken with the day before, who want to plant trees and care for them from seed to fruit. Garo concluded that we do not only report; we also learn.

What was new: trees and two stories

A short conversation at the end of Day 7 on what had been new at COP17 turned to bare stretches of earth by a river in Syunik, the young people who want to plant trees, and two stories, one about donkeys brought to a desert and one about trees planted in Dubai, reported here as they were told.

On Thursday 22 October, before the conference backdrop at the Meridian Expo, Garo Kotchounian asked me what my “WOW” of the past few days had been: a fact I had not known before. His own was that leopards and animals like them in the mountains are few and endangered.

My answer concerned trees. On a road in Syunik, beside a river, I had seen bare stretches of earth where, it seemed clear, the trees had been cut down, while the Lori region is very green. Yet the idea of planting trees is now present, especially among young people: the day before, I had spoken with one or two young people who want to plant trees and care for them from the seed to the fruit. Armenia, I argued, has an advantage in the water under its soil: in Syunik there was greenery wherever the river ran. Care of gardens and forests, which Garo called the most important thing, helps animals to multiply, draws tourists and gives villagers fruit.

Garo then told a story he had recently heard, as an example of how one change can lead to others: Israel, the story went, brought a particular kind of desert donkey, bred it for some years and released it into the desert, where the animals found water, and both plants and endangered animals increased. The record supports only part of this. Israel imported wild asses from Iran in 1968, bred them at the Hai-Bar Yotvata reserve and began releasing them in the Negev in 1982, to restore a species that had disappeared from the region; a few hundred live there today. The sources reviewed do not show that these animals dug for water or made the desert green. Well-digging by feral donkeys and horses was documented elsewhere, in the Sonoran Desert of the United States, by a 2021 study in Science; other animals drink from their wells.

I added a memory from my school years: our principal, Mr Garo Vanessian, used to tell us that after trees were planted in Dubai, it had changed by a few degrees. None of the sources reviewed shows a change in the city’s climate caused by tree planting. Garo ended the conversation with its point: we do not only report, we also learn.

Day 8, 23 October: forests and the young

In a meeting hall of COP17 I asked what business Armenia has at the conference; what Armenians bring to it I found in the Green Zone, among its young people: a tree-planting organisation and its root room, and university students who collected data as volunteers in the Ararat region.

All my COP17 films

On Friday 23 October, in a meeting hall of COP17 where journalists, lawmakers and specialists from many countries had gathered, I asked what business Armenia has at the conference. As the host of COP17, Armenia carries the work for two years, so that the agreements reached here are carried out. What Armenians themselves bring to the conference was found that day in the Green Zone, the part of COP17 open to the public, among the young people at the stands of Armenian organisations.

At the pavilion of My Forest Armenia, a young volunteer of the organisation explained its work. According to her, its founder, a Belgian-Armenian who lived in Belgium, chose not to leave Armenia’s environmental problems to others and set up the organisation at his own expense to plant forests across the country. She described Armenia’s forest cover as low compared with its neighbours, at only eleven per cent, and said that although Armenia covers only six and a half per cent of the Caucasus region, sixty per cent of the region’s biodiversity is found there. Endemic species that are starting to disappear, she said, can survive only if forests are planted where they live.

The organisation also gives villagers seasonal paid work, she explained, so that they do not migrate to Yerevan. The planting season in Armenia, she said, lasts only five weeks, so the villagers plant from sunrise to sunset and carry the saplings up the mountain on their backs. The organisation has planted three million trees, she said. A villager who has planted a forest with his own hands, she added, will not bring his animals to graze there or let anyone pull up the saplings to resell them. For five years after planting, she said, the organisation checks its forests and replaces the trees that fail. She also said that it plants up to twelve Armenian endemic species, although they are harder to grow than invasive species and adapt with difficulty, because invasive species gradually push out Armenia’s own, and that it counts a forest as a success when sixty per cent of its trees survive, seventy per cent being a very good result. The largest site it has planted, she added, is at Lernajur, shown on printed photographs at the pavilion.

Inside the pavilion, one room surrounded visitors with the projection of a real Armenian forest. A dark room beyond it showed what lies under a tree. Its guide, Hripsime, explained that the lights between the roots overhead stand for the links between the roots, which feed one another in a symbiotic system in which all the trees can grow together. The floor is soft, as damp soil is, and a soil sample shows two layers: the upper one wetter, darker and rich in humus, the lower one sandier and dry, with moss on top. A text on the wall states that one spoonful of soil holds more living organisms than there are people on Earth; the guide added that this is thanks to the microorganisms in the soil. In my view, the room was remarkable work: a piece of technology and truly a work of art.

The stand of the European University of Armenia presented research and training for climate resilience in the Ararat region, carried out, as its banner states, in collaboration with Nexus Intellect. Verej Isanians, who introduced himself as dean of the university’s Faculty of Management, explained that the project, Pathways2Resilience, is part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe research programme and is devoted to climate resilience. It focused on twelve settlements of the Ararat region and one town. Students collected primary data on climate change and on how the farming community is affected by it, for example by extreme drought or extreme rain, and the team also monitored the health of the population. The report took almost eighteen months of research and reporting, with the European University as the main research partner.

When I asked whether the students did this work for scholarships or as volunteers, he answered that most of the project was carried out by volunteers, students who live in the community, and that the students found environmental impacts in their own country that they had not known about, “under our nose”. Most of the volunteers at the stand were young women. The first-year students, asked about him, said that they had had the best impression of him from their first lesson and were asking for more lessons.

Earlier that day, at her pavilion, the volunteer of My Forest Armenia had spoken of the forests to come. Many people say that they will not live to enjoy the forests planted now, which take some twenty years to grow. But, she said, the forests that Armenia has now were made by past generations, and the present generation must do as much work for its own.

Day 9, 25 October: the young hands of the Green Zone

The stands on the third floor of the Green Zone showed what Armenia keeps, from the carpet knot and carved tuff, which young volunteers were trying their hands at, to rare fungi, protected areas and a century-old orchestra.

All my COP17 films

Saturday 24 October was my day off from COP17, and I spent it at the open-air theatre at HandArt, in Byurakan, which has its own film and article. On Sunday 25 October the report returned to the Green Zone, on the third floor of the Karen Demirchyan complex, with one question: how interested are young people in carpet weaving?

At the stand of Megerian Carpet, a carpet company that weaves and exhibits carpets at its factory and museum in Yerevan, Mrs Anna, who teaches the knot at the stand and has done this work for seventeen years, taught the knot of a hand-woven carpet to Natalie Harutyunyan, one of the young volunteers of the Green Zone. I had tied a knot at the same stand on 21 October. The knot follows a fixed sequence: the coloured thread is wrapped, the short thread is brought to the hook, the hook is turned down and drawn out between two warp threads, the knot is brought all the way down, and it is cut with a knife. After one knot made together, Natalie tied the next with her own hands, with Mrs Anna guiding her.

At the next stand, visitors carve a large panel of tuff, the volcanic stone of much of Armenia’s architecture, for the Tovmasyan Charity Foundation, and the carvers’ names are written down too. Ruzanna, also a young volunteer, worked beside the master, Arayik Tavakalyan. The master explained the technique: the outline is struck first, so that the carved leaf is not damaged, and the inside is then deepened, strike by strike. The panel’s final place has not yet been decided, and it will be worked on further in a workshop. Asked whether participants from other countries also take part, he replied that it is “going to become a worldwide work”.

The EU for Armenia stand presented programmes supported by the European Union in the regions of Armenia, in agriculture and ecological development, with a new region each day. The programme of 25 October was devoted to Lake Sevan and its ecology. Young players took part in a quiz of games and drawing, and the prizes included T-shirts printed with the winning drawings of children from a school in Gavar, the centre of the Gegharkunik region, near the lake.

The Ministry of Environment presented several of its bodies, among them Hayhydromet, the Zangezur Biosphere Complex, Lake Arpi National Park and a nature museum, with samples of fungi collected in specially protected areas and forestries. According to the presenter, most of them are listed in the Red Book of Armenia as endangered. One, the Battarrea fungus, had, in the presenter’s words, almost never been found in recent years. The truffle grows in oak forests beside the roots, as deep as thirty centimetres, and is found very rarely; the hedgehog mushroom is edible and valued, but listed in the Red Book. When I asked whether work would be done to restore such species, as with the leopard, the presenter answered that protection is mostly carried out in the specially protected areas, where human economic impact is strictly limited.

Margar Margaryan represented the Zangezur Biosphere Complex of the Ministry of Environment, in the province of Syunik, which manages seven specially protected areas, among them the Shikahogh State Reserve, Arevik National Park and the sanctuaries of Zangezur, the Plane Grove, Sev Lich and Boghakar. Besides protecting biodiversity, the complex organises ecotourism, with tours to the Khustup sanctuary and to a waterfall in Arevik National Park, where a trail has been built. Sébastien Favier of AFRAT, a training organisation based in the French Alps, presented Sentiers d’Arménie (Trails of Armenia), a project run with the Armenian training organisation CEPFA in Lori, Gegharkunik and Syunik. It develops ecotourism and hiking through economic development and training, and makes young people aware of the environment and the jobs around it, with the support of the French Development Agency and local authorities.

Speaking to camera in the hall, I said that I had gathered good information on biodiversity: how plants and animals will be protected, how rangers and environmental officials will keep the population informed, and how to stand by the forest and cut plants the way it should be done.

The Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra, 101 years old, showed its first historical photograph, taken in 1925, and the poster of its first concert. According to its presenter, the orchestra was founded by the composer Alexander Spendiaryan and Arshak Adamyan, then rector of the conservatory, and Spendiaryan foresaw that the modest student orchestra would one day bear the name of a state orchestra, as it later did. The presenter added that its centenary medal is made of the same stone as the Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall, the orchestra’s home: granite from the Pambak quarry.

The last stand I filmed that day was that of the National Center of Folk Music and Dance, where the sound of the kamancha, in a trio with the kanun and a wind instrument, drew me over. A young member of the Center explained that it has five groups, three of dance and two of traditional music; in front of the stand, people with COP17 lanyards, Green Zone volunteers among them, joined hands in a line dance across the hall.

Day 10, 26 October: the bird that comes back

At a press briefing in the Blue Zone, a girl from Beijing described the migration of her city’s swift between China and southern Africa; afterwards, visitors from several countries told me what they had found in Armenia.

All my COP17 films

On Monday 26 October the report was in the Blue Zone of COP17, at the Meridian Expo, the area for accredited participants. A press briefing presented a publication which, according to its host, brings together fourteen cases from China of young people’s action for biodiversity. The host summarised its message: young people are not only an audience for biodiversity education, but can also be observers, storytellers, organisers and people who initiate change.

The host then welcomed Feather, an eleven-year-old from Beijing who uses a nature name, a nickname inspired by nature, to speak about “a small bird and a great journey”. The Beijing swift is a subspecies of the common swift. Every spring, she explained, it flies more than ten thousand kilometres from Southern Africa back to Beijing, returning to the ancient buildings and parks where it was born. Tracking supports her account: light-level geolocators fitted to swifts breeding in Beijing between 2014 and 2018 recorded a round trip of about 30,000 kilometres a year, to wintering grounds in semi-arid south-western Africa. Feather said she is a young docent with Common Swift Guardians, together with more than twenty other families. In three years, she said, their volunteer activities near their homes have involved more than five hundred people and more than two thousand volunteer hours, and the swift-themed kites and postcards they design “really flew to South Africa, the winter home of our swifts”.

Feather then described a journey of her own. She travelled to South Africa, which she called the Beijing swift’s winter home, to explore its biodiversity. One rainy day flying termites filled the air, and since both swifts and people can eat them, she opened her mouth wide. The termites tasted sour, like lemongrass, and at that moment, she said, she felt like a swift herself. Loving animals, she said, is not enough: they must be loved in the right way, beginning with learning about them. She and her teammates are now making a first-aid kit for swifts. “With thousands of small hands joined together,” she said, “we became one great wing across mountains and seas.”

After the briefing, Feather and her mother spoke to my camera in Chinese. She volunteers in the data survey of the Beijing swifts at Longtan Lake Park and at Zhengyangmen. In February she went to South Africa with her teacher and her mother to look for the Beijing swifts, and they found them at a wetland that had formed by itself at a sewage treatment works. Her mother, whose nature name is Cape of Good Hope, said that the two of them had started the Swift Guardians action in Beijing, and hoped that more of the countries on the swifts’ migration would join it, “so that together we care about this little spirit of nature”.

In the concourse of the Blue Zone, representatives of every country were at work on the questions of their own countries, and I asked some of the visitors what they had found in Armenia.

Four young visitors, from Guatemala, Honduras and Germany, said that they had not had many expectations of Armenia but found it “really nice”. They had visited Garni and Geghard, and the day before, the Symphony of Stones, which one of them called “absolutely stunning”. One of them found that even without Armenian one can communicate “with hands and feet”, and felt safe on the roads even at night; between them, they praised the food, the hospitality and the many young volunteers supporting COP17.

Undarmaa, from Mongolia, in traditional dress, was in Armenia for the first time. Speaking in Mongolian, she said that Armenia’s land is very much like the Gobi, her country’s desert land, that the local people are calm and peaceful, that there are many ancient and historic places to see, and that Armenia is doing this COP really well.

Kieu Oanh, one of three youth representatives from Vietnam at COP17, had researched Armenia before her first visit and was struck by its ancient history, and the day before had gone to Khor Virap and to the village of Areni, which she called the birthplace of wine, with a wine cellar of more than 6,000 years. For her, COP17 brings together not only governments but diverse stakeholders: “we are youth here, we have the opportunity to raise our voice, to have the opportunity to be in the room.”

The last voice in my film was Alex, who introduced himself as a scientist from the United States working in indoor production of mushrooms and greenhouse crops, at COP17 with the fungi booth; he said that the first global strategy for fungal biodiversity had just been launched. It was his first visit to Armenia. His family immigrated to the United States about forty years ago, and many have not been able to come back since: “And so the COP has brought me back to Armenia, and I absolutely love it.” He is to work with Armenian scientists in Yerevan in the coming months and years, with the aim of bringing mushroom production for food to Armenia, and he had already visited the Symphony of Stones and Dilijan, where he went to look for mushrooms. “It will bring me back many times,” he said.

The swift returns to Beijing every spring. The film of the day closes with a question to its viewers: when will you come to Armenia?

Day 12, 29 October: what I learned at COP17

On the day before COP17 closed, I asked myself what the conference had taught me. The answer began with a duty to do no harm to nature, and it took shape among the people I met that day: a presenter of a Milan forestry project, schoolgirls from South Africa, a Cossack ensemble from Siberia and a table of young volunteers playing Uno.

All my COP17 films

On Thursday 29 October, the day before COP17 closed, I stood in front of the conference backdrop at the Meridian Expo and asked myself why I had come and what I was taking home. I came to bring you the picture of the Meridian Expo and to keep you accurately informed about what happened there. In the rooms where decisions are taken, I have no opinion to give, and I do not believe that change needs me at every political meeting: Aypoupen is about culture, works of art, good Armenians and the places of Armenia, not about politics. What held my attention at COP17 was the young, “because the young people are our future”.

Biodiversity is a word that is a little hard to say, yet all of it is tied to the future of the country. Just as parents hand their home to their children, a people hands its country to the generations that follow. That gave me my first lesson: do no harm to nature. Do not throw rubbish or cigarette ends, do not pollute the waters or cut down the trees, take good care of the animals and become the guardian of your surroundings. I also believe that the young should be responsible and demanding, and should ask the leadership how far the promises made to them, that their regions would prosper and improve, have been kept.

Two examples stay with me. If explosives are used in Lake Sevan to catch fish, the rest of the fish are harmed too, and polluted water harms the environment as a whole. And people in the villages who live in fear of leopards and other wild animals need some training, so that they know how to behave when they come face to face with them. If everyone stands together, the country’s life, culture, nature and people can be defended, and the country can become a more pleasant place for visitors.

I also learned that three million trees have been planted in Armenia, as the initiative of a diaspora Armenian, and that the young carry what they learn at such centres back to their villages and towns. A volunteer of My Forest Armenia told me this at the organisation’s pavilion in the Green Zone on 23 October, as reported in the Day 8 section, and the board behind its team at the stand, shown in the organisation’s own video from the conference, reads “Already accomplished: 3,200,000 trees planted, 1,000 hectares covered, 22 tree and shrub species, 11 reforestation sites”. Its news item of January 2026 likewise reports more than three million trees planted since its foundation (myforestarmenia.org).

My second lesson has an English name, exploitation: people using nature and other people while thinking only of their own interests. I know an example from what I have heard. When the war had just ended, or the Soviet Union had just stopped ruling Armenia, families who owned fine carpets, the work of master weavers, were in financial difficulty. Merchants from outside bought those carpets very cheaply, perhaps helping the families at that moment, and sold them abroad at far higher prices. The same can happen when very rare animals are killed for their fur, their horns or their bones. That places a duty on everyone: to stand up for the country’s riches and to be the guardians of its animals and plants.

Armenia holds the presidency of COP17 (Day 5), and it will help different countries to carry out their promises and to take their biodiversity further.

The day also gave me other people’s views of the conference and of Armenia. In the morning, beside the line of conference shuttle buses, I met Leonardo, from Italy, who presented Forestami, an urban forestry project in Milan. “Biodiversity is important,” he told me, “and planting trees is the most efficient way to clean the air in our cities.” The project, he explained, comes from a very polluted area of Italy and of Europe, and its goal is to raise the tree canopy cover of whole cities. On its own website, Forestami describes its goal as planting three million new trees by 2030 in the Metropolitan City of Milan; that target belongs to Milan and is a different matter from the Armenian figure above. It was Leonardo’s first visit, and he called Armenia “a beautiful country with beautiful people”, welcoming, with amazing food and a lot of potential in the city.

Outside the venue, under a COP17 banner, I met a group of learners from South Africa and their leader, who described them as learners doing poetry and advocates for biodiversity, there to make people understand “that biodiversity isn’t about plants and animals, but it’s for everyone here”. The learners found the people of Armenia kind and caring, and the country clean: since their arrival, one said, they had not seen a piece of paper on the floor. They had been introduced to a school where they were taught the traditional craft of carpet making, and to traditional Armenian foods, among them gata. One of the learners told me why she had come: “Adults usually say kids should be seen and not be heard … But I’m not here to wait for my turn. I am here to make my voice to be heard.” I told her that I was proud of her, and their leader thanked Armenia “for taking care of us”.

At the Russian pavilion, in the hall of the Biodiversity Technology and Innovation Expo, three members of what they called the combined Cossack ensemble of Russia, from Siberia, from the cities of Tyumen and Omsk, spoke in Russian. They described Armenia as “simply a gorgeous country”, warm and welcoming, and its cuisine as “simply a song”. They thanked Armenia for its hospitality, for keeping and carrying on its people’s culture and for treating all the cultures of the world with respect. At the pavilion, they said, they try to show the whole world “how much culture unites us all”. One of them said that, if she were asked whether she would like to fly to Armenia again, she would say “yes a thousand times”.

In the main hall, a presenter in Armenian traditional dress introduced Jan Armenia, which she presented as a tourism organisation, and invited visitors to its pavilion to find out more.

“Today we may not be satisfied with our country, but we can prepare a good generation, so that our future shines.” That was my thought of the day, and it brought me to the media area of the conference, on its fourth floor, in front of the lifts outside the reception area, where young volunteers were playing Uno during a break. I joined them. They were university students of journalism, of marketing and management, and of international communication at Yerevan State University. One of the players recalled being sent out of class on the first day of French, in the seventh grade, for saying “oui, oui, baguette”. Sitting at the table, I told them that the young people interested me and that I was proud of them.

The game ended with the players’ cry of “Uno! Uno! Uno! Dos! Tres!”, and my day with an admission. In a selfie with the players, I introduced them as “Armenia’s best Uno players, the ones I lost to”, and added: “They won a glorious victory; I lost too. Congratulations.”

Day 13, 30 October: the last day of COP17

On Friday 30 October the conference reached its end. The President, Hambardzum Matevosyan, brought the Parties through the last plenary, one disputed paragraph was settled by a compromise, and nearly fifty decisions were adopted by the time the talks ended the next morning. I then took the road to Gyumri, where nothing showed that the summit had taken place, and I asked the question that closes the film.

All my COP17 films

On Friday 30 October, as COP17 began, so it ended. The delegations crossed the Meridian Expo towards the big hall, where the final decisions were to be approved or rejected. The day was to show how many meetings were held and how many decisions were taken.

Delegates made their way along the walkways between the halls, one after another, towards the plenary. The President of the conference, Mr Matevosyan, was already on his way. On this last day the work of the President could be seen at its plainest: to give the floor, to bring the Parties together and to find a middle way.

In the plenary the President adopted the texts one by one. Many countries argued over a single paragraph, on incentives that harm nature. After days of discussion in Nairobi and in Yerevan the paragraph was still in brackets. The President proposed to delete it and asked whether there were objections. The United Kingdom wished to keep it, the European Union asked to add the words “including subsidies”, Colombia supported the United Kingdom, and India called the paragraph a red line, yet accepted a compromise in the spirit of the occasion. The President asked the delegations to consult one another and said he would return to the item.

A compromise followed: the word “voluntary” was deleted from the second set of brackets and the brackets around the rest were lifted. When no one objected, the President’s gavel made the text a decision. The talks then continued through the night until the morning, and by their end nearly fifty decisions had been adopted. In my judgement the President and his team did a very good job.

Looking back, the summit’s outcome for Armenia lies in its people. Andre Gumuchdjian came from Belgium and founded My Forest Armenia. The Armenia Tree Project has planted trees in Armenia since 1994. WWF Armenia is bringing back the red deer and protecting the leopard. Alex, a scientist from the United States, came to Armenia for the first time and will work on mushrooms. Hrachya Keshishyan and his team shaped the pavilion with their vision and their art. For me, the main matter was the young. The President, himself a young minister, asked them to be demanding of the decision-makers.

My story with you began in that room, and there it came to its close. I thanked the staff who had helped me to hand in all my papers, and said: keep your waters clean, keep your countries clean, take care of nature wherever you are, so that our children’s children enjoy this nature.

On the way to Gyumri I saw small fir trees planted along almost the whole of the highway. It was impressive. My flight was leaving from Gyumri, the city where the President of COP17 was born. There, I found none of what Yerevan had shown: no flags, no pictures, no butterfly logo, no bustle. I asked passers-by and then some young people a simple question, why there was no sign of the summit. Many did not know what was happening in Yerevan; others, university students among them, did not want to answer before the camera, although I said the question was not political and that I only wished to hear their view of what the son of their city was accomplishing. Instead they asked where I came from. At Vardanants Square too there were no announcements of COP17 and no plaques.

My question stays open, and I leave it to you: why, in Gyumri, about biodiversity, is there not one picture and not one presence of this event?

The film ends with the young Armenians I met during the conference, who are the future: the volunteers, students and teenagers who guided me and spoke to my camera, with a few photographs of those days.