GBF NBSAPs Target 20: Strengthen capacity-building, technology transfer, and scientific and technic
GBF-aligned NBSAPS to ensure just, sustainable futures for all life to thrive: the role of African civil society
Target 20: Strengthen capacity-building, technology transfer, and scientific and technical cooperation for biodiversity FACTSHEET 10
The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) is committed to dismantling inequalities and resisting corporate industrial expansion in Africa’s food and agriculture systems.
PO Box 29170, Melville 2109, Johannesburg, South Africa
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Series conceptualised by ACB director Mariam Mayet
Researched and co-authored by ACB research associate Linzi Lewis and Mariam Mayet
Design and layout: Katerina Sonntagova, Moss and Sea Studio
Cover art: Summertime by Jess Hooft, https://www.jesshooft-art.com/
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The ACB gratefully acknowledges the financial support of several donors, though the views expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of our donors.
July 2026
Acronyms
ACB African Centre for Biodiversity
AI Artificial intelligence
CBD Convention on Biological Diversity
COP Conference of the Parties
DSI Digital sequence information
FMSS Farmer-managed seed systems
IPLCs Indigenous Peoples and local communities
KM–GBF Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
NBSAPs National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans
About this paper
Target 20 is a deeply contested means-of-implementation target. This paper is written in the context of the first global review of collective progress in implementing the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM–GBF), to be considered at the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), including progress on means of implementation. The review will draw primarily on updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), national reports and targets, and a global report on collective progress.
This creates an important political opening for African civil society to assess whether Target 20 is strengthening public, community-led biodiversity action, or legitimising corporate-controlled digitalisation, proprietary science, genomic technologies, data extraction, and new forms of technological dependency. The issue is not only whether capacity-building, technology transfer, and scientific cooperation take place, but also whose priorities they serve, who controls the knowledge and infrastructure, and whether they advance biodiversity justice, food sovereignty, agroecology, farmers’ rights, the precautionary principle, and democratic public interest governance.
The paper proposes that African governments, civil society, and movements use the global review to insist on a justice-based interpretation of Target 20 in the implementation and review of NBSAPs. Such an interpretation must avoid reinforcing structural inequalities and be rooted in technology sovereignty; equitable cooperation; democratic control over biodiversity data and infrastructure; public science; farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS); agroecology; and the protection of Indigenous, traditional, and farmer knowledge. It must also be translated into practical arrangements: clear institutional mandates, participatory capacity needs assessments, technology governance safeguards, public financing, measurable indicators, and accountability mechanisms that enable communities and civil society to monitor whether implementation serves the public interest.
Background
The KM–GBF, adopted at COP15 in 2022, consists of 23 targets, of which Targets 14 to 23 focus on means of implementation. Target 20, which aims to strengthen capacity-building, technology transfer, and scientific and technical cooperation, is a crucial component of the KM–GBF in addressing historical inadequacies in meeting biodiversity objectives. The lack of financial resources and technical capacity has long been considered a barrier to developing states’ implementation of the CBD (Mackenzie, 2010). In many respects, the KM–GBF goes further than earlier frameworks in creating the conditions necessary for the success of such ambitious global policies (Amos, 2025), particularly through Goal D.1
Also at COP15, Decision 15/82 adopted a long-term strategic framework for capacitybuilding and development to support nationally determined priorities for implementing the KM–GBF and established the Technical and Scientific Cooperation (TSC) Mechanism3 to respond to country-driven technical and scientific needs. These mechanisms recognise that capacity-building, scientific and technological cooperation, and technology transfer are essential to implementing the KM–GBF (Zhang et al., 2025). As the first global review moves towards COP17, however, the central question is whether they are shifting the conditions of implementation in favour of developing countries, public institutions, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), small-scale farmers, women, youth, and civil society, or reproducing unequal relations through new technical, digital, and financial channels.
1 Adequate means of implementation, including financial resources, capacity-building, technical and scientific cooperation, and access to and transfer of technology to fully implement the KM–GBF are secured and equitably accessible to all Parties, especially developing country Parties, in particular the least developed countries and small island developing states, as well as countries with economies in transition, progressively closing the biodiversity finance gap of US$700 billion per year, and aligning financial flows with the KM–GBF and the 2050 Vision for biodiversity.
2 Decision 15/8. Capacity-building and development and technical and scientific cooperation: https://www.cbd.int/doc/decisions/ cop-15/cop-15-dec-08-en.pdf
3 Technical and Scientific Cooperation Mechanism: https://www. cbd.int/tsc/tscm
Target 20: Strengthen capacity-building, technology transfer, and scientific and technical cooperation for biodiversity
Strengthen capacity-building and development, access to and transfer of technology, and promote development of and access to innovation and technical and scientific cooperation, including through South-South, North-South and triangular cooperation, to meet the needs for effective implementation, particularly in developing countries, fostering joint technology development and joint scientific research programmes for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and strengthening scientific research and monitoring capacities, commensurate with the ambition of the goals and targets of the framework.
Building on Aichi Target 194, which was only partially achieved (Secretariat of the CBD, 2020), Target 20 broadens the focus from knowledge and information sharing to capacity-building, technology transfer, innovation, and scientific cooperation. It seeks to ensure that Parties have the capacity to access and use financial, technological, and scientific resources effectively. Its success is therefore a prerequisite for achieving the other 22 targets and must not be treated as a side project but as a core component of national biodiversity planning. Yet, although framed as an enabler for developing countries, Target 20 may reproduce historical and structural inequities if it is not interpreted through a strong justice lens.
The global review heightens the significance of Target 20 by making implementation gaps, capacity constraints, and means-of-implementation failures visible in a consolidated political process. African civil society should use this moment not only to assess progress but to contest the direction of implementation: who defines capacity needs, whose knowledge counts, what technologies are prioritised, how is data governed, and whether support strengthens sovereignty and public interest biodiversity governance or deepens dependency on proprietary platforms and externally driven research agendas.
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Capacity-building is among the most critical and contentious areas of KM–GBF implementation. Target 20 places the onus on developing countries to strengthen their capacity to meet ambitious 2030 targets, yet conventional approaches often overlook systemic injustices, such as debt burdens, structural adjustment, resource extraction, and the unequal terms on which African countries are inserted into global trade, science, and technology systems. If capacity-building is reduced to technical training or transfer, it risks reintroducing conditionalities under a “green” or technical banner. The focus should instead be on building the collective agency of public institutions, civil society, farmer organisations, and IPLCs to shape biodiversity policy, defend rights, monitor implementation, advance agroecology and FMSS, and challenge destructive corporate and state practices.
While the KM–GBF recognises differing national capacities and the need for international support, it does not specify how countries with varying circumstances should implement its global goals and targets (Lehmann et al., 2025). This raises important questions of justice: capacity for whom and for what purpose? Who defines these needs—governments, donors, corporations, consultants, public institutions, civil society, IPLCs, or small-scale farmers—and what kinds of capacity are required for transformative biodiversity implementation: technical, legal, institutional, political, financial, community-based, or movement-building?
These questions go directly to who is engaged in the design, implementation, and monitoring of NBSAPs. For example, the NBSAP Accelerator Partnership found that IPLCs are far less frequently engaged than other stakeholder groups, with about two-thirds of Parties to the CBD failing to have national targets relating to IPLCs (NBSAP Accelerator Partnership, 2026). This illustrates persistent participation gaps and failures to embed rights and equity in national biodiversity governance.
Technology transfer
The “technology gap” is often framed as a global challenge requiring coordinated international action. Yet technologies promoted as innovation are not neutral: they are embedded in ownership structures, intellectual property regimes, data infrastructures, and commercial strategies. In today’s digital era, data and platformisation exercise significant power over markets, research, and state governance (Bigo et al., 2019; Törnberg, 2023; Nie & Yang, 2025). Without safeguards, technology transfer can accelerate the enclosure of African biodiversity, genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and farmers’ data, while shifting authority from communities and public institutions to corporations, private platforms, and Northern research institutions. It is therefore vital to ask what tools, systems, and platforms will be advanced under the KM–GBF; who owns them; who controls the data and intellectual property; and who benefits financially from their use. Relevant examples include digital sequence information (DSI) databases, synthetic biology tools, genomic technologies, digital monitoring systems, artificial intelligence (AI) decision-support tools, drones, remote sensing, and data dashboards.
The link between Target 20, DSI, synthetic biology, and digital agriculture makes this especially urgent (Thomas, 2024; Chowdhry & Dano, 2026). Without consent, governance, or benefit-sharing, biodiversity data, genetic resources, and traditional knowledge can be extracted, digitised, and commercialised. The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB)’s position is that technology transfer cannot be separated from the precautionary principle, biosafety, human rights, farmers’ rights, data sovereignty, and democratic oversight. Capacity-building must therefore include the ability to assess risks, failures, efficacy, and suitability; evaluate socio-economic, cultural, ethical, and ecological impacts; regulate genome editing, synthetic biology, AI-enabled biotechnology, and DSI-related infrastructures; and prevent corporate control and neo-colonial agendas over technologies, capacities, and knowledge. This requires strong public interest regulation, transparency, conflict-of-interest protections, access to safeguards, and accountability mechanisms so that technology transfer does not become a channel for corporate influence over biodiversity policy, research agendas, monitoring systems, or public funding (TWN, 2024).
The diversity of national circumstances, priorities, and constraints among developing countries also militates against a one-size-fits-all approach and requires national and community-defined needs to be centred. This includes prioritising domestic technology development in developing countries (Yu, 2024). Domestic and regionally shared technologies can strengthen autonomy and adaptability. For ACB, “appropriate technology” must be defined politically and socially, not merely technically: technologies should be accessible, affordable, open, locally adaptable, publicly governed, accountable to affected communities, compatible with agroecology and biodiversity justice, and responsive to community and ecosystem needs. Technologies that deepen dependence on proprietary platforms, external expertise, corporate infrastructure, or donor-driven systems should not be treated as implementation support.
This also raises the question of whose knowledge is recognised as scientific and innovative. Indigenous, traditional, farmer, and agroecological knowledge systems are not supplementary add-ons but living systems of innovation, experimentation, ecological monitoring, seed stewardship, and biodiversity governance. They must be recognised in national biodiversity governance on terms defined with communities, farmers, and IPLCs themselves. Protections are also needed to prevent misappropriation, digitisation without consent, and the conversion of knowledge and genetic resources into proprietary assets or new commercial value chains without fair and equitable benefit-sharing (Ramakrishnan, 2025).
Scientific and technical cooperation
In the Global South, biodiversity-related knowledge and technologies are often generated through work conducted by resource-rich countries in resource-poor countries. In many cases, the resulting knowledge, technologies, and innovations are not effectively transferred to developing country hosts, and ownership agreements remain unequal (Vanhove et al., 2017).
“Parachute”, “helicopter”, or “colonial” science, in which scientists from the Global North conduct research in the Global South with limited collaboration, data sharing, skill transfer, or engagement with local scientists and authorities, reinforces these inequalities (Pettorelli et al., 2021; Stefanoudis et al., 2021). Strong in-house capacity in countries of the Global South can help transform these relationships, direct research priorities, and ensure that information, technologies, and applications are locally relevant and responsive (MacFayden et al., 2022).
Despite calls for more equitable partnerships, research design, capacity-building activities, budgets and responsibilities continue to be shaped largely by Northern donors and scholars (Rakotonarivo & Andriamihaja, 2023). More equitable scientific cooperation is therefore required. South-South and Southern-driven triangular cooperation can help shift these dynamics, but only if partnerships are co-designed, governed equitably, and anchored in public sector and community benefit, rather than extractive research models, dependency, or the outsourcing of African biodiversity knowledge and data.
Considerations for implementing Target 20
African civil society should therefore use the COP17 global review to support, pressure, and hold governments accountable for implementing Target 20 through concrete NBSAP measures, institutional responsibilities, financing arrangements, safeguards, indicators, and review processes:
• Building and restoring collective agency of public institutions, civil society formations, farmer organisations, women, youth, and IPLCs to shape biodiversity policy, defend rights, monitor implementation, advance agroecology and FMSS, and challenge corporate capture of biodiversity governance.
• Advancing debt relief, public finance, and financial reform by linking capacity-building to broader financial reforms that alleviate debt, expand public budgets for biodiversity, support community-led implementation, and avoid shifting responsibility onto private finance, offset markets, and corporate disclosure schemes.
• Prioritise open, appropriate, publicly governed, and community-accountable technologies;
• Protect Indigenous, traditional, farmer, and agroecological knowledge systems from extraction and misappropriation;
• Require free, prior, and informed consent where relevant;
• Ensure fair and equitable benefit-sharing; and
• Prevent biodiversity monitoring and data systems from being captured by offset markets, corporate disclosure schemes, or proprietary conservation technologies.
• Promoting equity, co-design, precaution, and sovereignty by supporting public interest research, South-South cooperation, regional knowledge exchange, community-led monitoring, agroecological innovation, FMSS, and investment in African public sector scientific capacity, while ensuring that biosafety, socio-economic assessment, data sovereignty, and the precautionary principle guide all technology-related implementation.
Implementation should begin with a public, participatory capacity needs assessment that identifies capacities, gaps, and risks across state institutions, public research bodies, civil society and farmer organisations, and IPLCs. In the context of the global review, such assessments should test whether national Target 20 commitments are credible, financed, and grounded in affected communities’ needs. They should cover legal, institutional, financial, data governance, biosafety, socio-economic assessment, and community monitoring capacities, and identify where external partnerships, donor programmes, technology providers, or private platforms may create dependency, conflicts of interest, or corporate capture. The results should be reflected in NBSAP implementation plans, budgets, and monitoring frameworks, with clear responsibilities assigned to relevant ministries, public institutions, and community-facing mechanisms.
To make Target 20 enforceable in practice, NBSAPs should include milestones, dedicated budget lines, transparent criteria for technology partnerships, rules on data ownership and access, safeguards for Indigenous, traditional, and farmer knowledge, and mechanisms for independent public interest oversight. Monitoring should track not only the number of trainings, tools, or partnerships delivered, but whether these measures strengthen domestic and community capacity, improve democratic control over biodiversity data and technologies, support agroecology, FMSS, South-South and regional cooperation, and reduce dependence on proprietary systems and externally driven research agendas. These indicators should help civil society engage with the global review by documenting implementation gaps, harmful technology pathways, corporate influence and failures to respect rights, consent, and benefit-sharing.
As such, NBSAPs can include implementation commitments to:
• Data governance: establish public and community-controlled biodiversity data governance systems; transparent rules on technology partnerships, data ownership, access, storage, and sharing; safeguards for DSI, AI-enabled biotechnology, and digital monitoring infrastructures; and conflict-of-interest protections for technology providers, research institutions, and private sector actors.
• Knowledge systems and farmers’ rights: support FMSS and agroecology as living systems of innovation; recognise and protect Indigenous, local, and farmer knowledge in national biodiversity governance; ensure free, prior, and informed consent where relevant; protect farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seed; and prevent misappropriation or digitisation of knowledge without fair and equitable benefit-sharing.
• Public finance, precaution, and accountability: create accessible public funding windows for civil society and community monitoring; assign clear responsibilities and timelines; require periodic public reporting on Target 20 implementation; build capacity to apply the precautionary principle, biosafety regulation, and socio-economic assessment; and safeguard against corporate capture of biodiversity research, policy, finance, and monitoring infrastructure.
Ultimately, Target 20 is about democratising the governance of science, technology, knowledge, and data for biodiversity. In the lead-up to COP17 and beyond, African civil society should use the global review not only to assess reported activity, but to ask whether implementation is shifting power. Interpreted through a justice lens, Target 20 can strengthen food sovereignty, agroecology, farmers’ rights, biodiversity justice, African technological sovereignty, and the collective agency of communities and civil society, while rejecting pathways that deepen corporate power, technological dependency, data colonialism, and the extraction of biodiversity knowledge from the Global South.
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