UN Convention on Biological Diversity to meet in Montreal

The Aichi Targets-

• Many of the 24 conservation targets under discussion at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) aim to avoid past mistakes and improve on the world’s last set of conservation goals — the Aichi Biodiversity Targets that expired in 2020.
• The Aichi Targets, adopted during the 2010 CBD summit in Nagoya, located in Japan’s Aichi prefecture, included goals such as reducing deforestation by at least half during the coming decade and curbing pollution so that it no longer harmed ecosystems.
• After parties adopted the Aichi Targets, they were expected to devise their own national biodiversity strategies that would mimic the goals laid out by Aichi. Nearly all parties created these strategies, but most were never fully implemented.

Status of the Aichi Targets-

• The most notable Aichi objective — and one of the few to include a numerical goal,  aimed to protect or conserve 17% of all land and inland waters and 10% of the ocean by the end of the decade.
• While some progress was made toward that goal, the world ultimately fell short. 
• Today about 15% of the world’s land and 8% of ocean territories are under some form of protection, though the level of protection varies.
• About 10% of the targets saw no significant progress. Six of the targets, including the land and ocean conservation target, were deemed “partially achieved”.
•  No single country met all 20 Aichi Targets within its own borders.
• In the end, Aichi was deemed a failure by the United Nations and the CBD secretariat called on parties to come up with another guiding document to direct conservation efforts through 2030 and beyond.

Reasons for failing to meet Aichi Targets-

• A lack of clearly defined metrics by which to gauge progress made the Aichi goals tough to implement.
• Monitoring and reporting success was also a big issue with Aichi. 
• Countries largely failed to update others on the progress they were — or were not — making.
• No robust monitoring, planning, reporting and review framework.
• A lack of financing to help developing countries meet the Aichi goals was also an obstacle to their success.
• The Global Environment Facility, the primary source of financing for international biodiversity protection, has collected around $5 billion from 29 countries for the funding period from 2022 to 2026.
• That is hardly enough to make up the $711 billion funding gap per year estimated by a 2019 assessment by several conservation institutes.
• The Aichi Targets also failed to garner buy-in from governments beyond the environmental ministers who brokered the deal.