AICHI TARGETS
1.Why in news
Delegates from 196 countries which are Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are meeting in Montreal, Canada from December 7-21 with the aim to hammer out a new global agreement on halting environmental loss
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 of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets that expired in 2020
2.What are aichi targets
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
Many of the targets, however, included vague language and did not hold countries to a specific action
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
2.1.Goals
| Strategic Goal A | Address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society |
| Strategic Goal B | Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use |
| Strategic Goal C | To improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity |
| Strategic Goal D | Enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services |
| Strategic Goal E | Enhance implementation through participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building |
3.Key takeaways
- 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, the assessment found. Six of the targets, including the land and ocean conservation target, were deemed “partially achieved”
- 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
4.Aichi target failures
- A lack of clearly defined metrics by which to gauge progress made the Aichi goals tough to implement
- One of the reasons the world was able to meet the goal for conserving 17% of land areas globally
- A lack of financing to help developing countries meet the Aichi goals was also an obstacle to their success a point that has led negotiators to include financing plans within the draft being negotiated at the Montreal talks
- 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
| For Prelims: CBD, Aichi targets, GEF, Protocols |
Source:indianexpress
