This month’s U.N. biodiversity talks in Montreal aim to hammer out a new, global agreement. But this isn’t the first time governments have tried to halt environmental loss through agreed targets.

In fact, many of the 24 conservation targets under discussion now aim to avoid past mistakes and improve on the world’s last set of conservation goals – the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Here’s a look at the Aichi Targets that expired in 2020 with every single target still unmet.

The Aichi Targets, adopted during the 2010 U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (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 specific action, experts say.

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.

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.

And no single country met all 20 Aichi Targets within its own borders, according to a September 2020 U.N. assessment.

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.”

“At a global level, none of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets were met or achieved, but we also know that some progress was made at the national level in a number of countries,” said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the CBD.

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.

A lack of clearly defined metrics by which to gauge progress made the Aichi goals tough to implement, experts say.

“Aichi was made of aspirational targets, which was great for … enabling people to do a lot, but not great for communication,” said Basile van Havre, who is helping mediate negotiations on the new targets on behalf of the CBD.

One of the reasons the world was able to meet the goal for conserving 17% of land areas globally, he said, was simply that the goal’s success could be defined by that single number.

“It’s important to have measurable targets,” he said.

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.

“A key priority for us … is the agreement on robust monitoring, planning, reporting and review framework,” said Hugo Schally, a biodiversity negotiator with the European Union.

“Because that is what made the Aichi framework so ineffective, and that’s what generated these negotiation processes.”

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.

“We need the whole of government,” said the CBD’s Mrema. “It’s not the matter to be left to the ministries of environment alone. This is one of the lessons we’ve learned from the failure of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.”

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Around the past working day, Ukraine’s Protection Forces have repelled enemy attacks in the vicinity of the Luhansk region’s Bilohorivka, and the Donetsk region’s Klishchiivka and Marinka.

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Asian shares tracked Wall Street higher on Friday amid hopes that China’s economy would pick up pace as COVID-19 curbs ease, although caution ahead of a week full of risk events, including the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting, could cap sentiment.

The U.S. dollar extended declines for the third straight day, retreating on the Japanese yen, euro and sterling.

The optimism in share markets looks set to extend to Europe, with the pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures 0.4% higher. S&P 500 futures rose 0.2%, while Nasdaq futures increased 0.3%.

In Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) rose 1.1%, edging closer to a three-month high hit earlier in the week. For the week, it was also set to rise 1.1%.

Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) surged 1.2%.

China’s Premier Li Keqiang, in comments carried by state media, said on Thursday the country’s shift in COVID policy would allow the economy to pick up pace, a day after a top-level party meeting pledged to focus on stabilising growth while optimising pandemic measures.

Investors are piling back into battered Chinese shares even though many economists warn a recovery could be long and bumpy, with the risk of sharp surge in new infections.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index (.HSI) advanced 1.6%, with mainland developers (.HSMPI) up a whopping 7.3%. Chinese blue chips (.CSI300), however, saw more subdued gains.

Commodity prices also rallied, with prices for iron ore surging 4.5% on Friday to the highest in six months amid hopes of improved demand from China.

Analysts at Nomura expect 2023 to be a year of outperformance for Asia – with a return of 12% by the end of 2023, although the first quarter could be choppy as weak economic data and Fed’s late cycle hikes lead to softer sentiment.

“We turn even more optimistic on AeJ stocks (Asia excluding Japan) and expect a far better 2023, driven by China’s reopening/recovery push and as the Fed approaches the end of its tightening cycle in the months ahead.”

Apart from China optimism, investors are focused on U.S. producer price inflation figures later in the day for more signs about the health of the U.S. economy, after data overnight showed some loosening in the labour market, with weekly jobless claims rising moderately.

U.S. monthly consumer inflation data is also due next week, with economists forecasting inflation likely slowed slightly to 8.0% in November from a year earlier, compared with 8.2% in October.

Futures have priced in a near-certain possibility that the Fed will slow down its rate hike to 50 basis points next week, but the target U.S. federal funds rate would have to peak around 4.9% by next May.

“This slowing is not a signal that the central bank’s job is nearly done…the slower pace of hikes starts a new phase of the Fed’s tightening cycle,” said Brian Martin, head of G3 economics at ANZ.

“With inflation proving sticky and the labour market still buoyant, the risks to our 5.00% terminal view are to the topside.”

The Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England are all set to announce interest rate decisions next week as policymakers continue to tap the brakes on economic growth through firmer rates to thwart stubbornly high inflation.

The U.S. dollar slid 0.2% against a basket of major currencies on Friday, on top of a drop of 0.4% overnight. It softened 0.4% against the Japanese yen to 136.04 yen.

The euro also rose 0.2% against the greenback to $1.0576, within a whisker of the five month high of $1.0594.

Treasury yields resumed edging lower on Friday, after snapping a three day losing streak the day before. They fell to the lowest in three years earlier in the week on expectations of slower growth or that a recession will curb the rise in rates.

The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes eased 3 basis points to 3.4597%, compared with its U.S. close of 3.493%. The two-year yield touched 4.29%, down from its U.S. close of 4.312%.

The yield curve remains the most inverted since the early 1980s at around -83bps, pointing towards a U.S. recession in the near future.

In the oil market, prices rose after tumbling the day before amid fears a slowdown in the global economy would lead to reduced demand.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 0.7% to $71.96 per barrel, while Brent crude settled at $76.72 a barrel, 0.7% higher.

Gold was slightly higher. Spot gold was traded at $1796.69 per ounce.

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Michael Lind (moderator) – ASU Long run of War Fellow Co-Founder, New America Dr. Philip Bobbitt – Herbert Wechsler Professor …

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Late last month, Shanghai resident Pei was one of many people who came out in support of historic protests against China’s COVID-19 curbs, including filming several seconds of footage of a man being arrested on a street corner.

Almost immediately, Pei said, five or six plainclothes police grabbed him. He was taken to a police station and held for 20 hours, at times with his arms and legs tied to a chair, he told Reuters.

“The policeman who shoved me into the car tried to intimidate me by saying I should be worried if other people find out what I did. Feeling defiant, I told him, I will let the world know what you police are doing,” said Pei, 27. He asked to be identified only by part of his name for fear of repercussions.

Now, as many Chinese residents welcome a relaxation of lockdown measures that have crippled businesses and stoked unemployment, some protesters scooped up by China’s security apparatus face an anxious wait about their fate.

While Pei and other protesters were released with a warning, some rights lawyers and academics note President Xi Jinping’s hard line on dissent over the past decade, and say risks remain of further harassment and prosecution.

“‘Squaring the accounts after the autumn harvests’ is the Party’s way of dealing with people who have betrayed it,” said Lynette Ong, a University of Toronto professor, referring to the practice of delaying score settling until the time is ripe.

China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a request for comment on the laws they might use against protesters. The Shanghai police also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pei’s description of how he was arrested or on what further actions they might take.

Last week, in a statement that did not refer to the protests, the Communist Party’s top body in charge of law enforcement agencies said China would crack down on “the infiltration and sabotage activities of hostile forces” and would not tolerate any “illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order”.

Asked about the protests, China’s foreign ministry has said rights and freedoms must be exercised lawfully.

Reuters was unable to establish how many protesters are still in police custody. Social media appeals for details on the whereabouts of a handful of missing protesters remain online.

The protests, widely seen as a tipping point to an easing in tight COVID restrictions, largely petered out in several cities after police mounted a heavy presence on streets.

The repercussions of protesting in China have grown in recent years under Xi’s tenure, with the Ministry of Public Security introducing guidelines two years ago that have been used by local authorities to ban protesters from taking up jobs such as tour guides or insurance agents, and also make it harder for their family members to obtain government-related jobs.

Zhang Dongshuo, a Beijing-based lawyer who has handled rights cases in the past, said the levels of punishment for protesting in China vary widely.

Those deemed to be bystanders could be let off with a small fine and up to 15 days’ detention, while physical altercations with police could lead to jail terms for disrupting public order or “picking quarrels” and provoking trouble.

Those who shouted slogans calling for the ouster of Xi or the Communist Party – as seen in a number of protests across China – potentially face heavier charges of inciting or engaging in subversion of the state, Zhang said, which in the most extreme cases carry punishment of up to life in prison.

Eiro, another Shanghai protester who was detained after trying to stop police from taking away a fellow protestor, said that during her interrogation, police particularly wanted to know if anyone had distributed blank A4 sheets of paper that were a defining symbol of these protests, as well as the identities of protest organisers.

“The police said there’ll be no punishment for all of us this time, but may call us back after further investigation,” she told Reuters on an encrypted messaging app.

Pei, Eiro and other protesters Reuters spoke to said they were asked by police to sign letters of repentance, with some of them asked to read the letters aloud while being filmed.

During Hong Kong’s protracted anti-China, pro-democracy protests in 2019, thousands were arrested but only charged much later with offences such as rioting and subversion, and many are still in legal proceedings.

“I probably won’t go (protesting) again in the short term,” Eiro said. “Everyone was impulsive this time and had no experience. We hadn’t prepared well and there wasn’t any mature organisation and communication platform that could unite and organise everyone.”

During a meeting in Beijing last week with European Council President Charles Michel, Xi attributed the dissent in part on youths frustrated by the pandemic, according to one senior EU official.

Alfred Wu, assistant professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said a harsher crackdown was only more likely if authorities believed the protests to be organised and political in nature, rather than leaderless and spontaneous.

“They just sprang up organically because people were driven by a sense of hopelessness and desperation about the never-ending COVID restrictions,” Wu said.

For some, however, the desire for broader political freedoms remains undiminished even with the COVID relaxation measures.

“I don’t think this is good news or a victory in our struggle because what we are asking for is liberty,” said Eiro.

Despite the looming shadow of future reprisals by authorities, Pei said he had no regrets.

“It was worth it. It allowed me to personally see the Communist Party’s control over our speech, and to see how the freedom of the people under its rule is deeply restricted.”

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Judging by Friday’s quiet streets in the heart of China’s capital and city eateries adherence to virus curbs, the anxieties created by the ‘zero-COVID’ regime could hinder the world’s second largest economy’s return to health.

Though the government on Wednesday loosened key parts of the strict controls that kept the pandemic largely at bay for the past three years, many people and businesses appear wary of being too quick to shake off the shackles.

In the central city of Wuhan, where the pandemic erupted in late 2019, there were more signs of life with some areas busy with commuters on Friday. But locals say a return to normal is still a long way off.

“They’ve relaxed the measures but still, there’s nobody about,” said a taxi driver surnamed Wang, who didn’t want to give his full name.

“You see these roads, these streets…they ought to be, busy, full of people. But there’s no one. It’s dead out here.”

Yet China has been anything but placid during the past few weeks, with protests against the stifling COVID curbs in many cities across the country that marked the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago.

Little more than a month after the National Health Commission stressed commitment to its strict virus containment policy, saying it was “putting people and lives first”, it has sounded a retreat from “zero-COVID” and officials are now telling people they have less to fear.

Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese epidemiologist famed for combating the 2003 SARS epidemic, said that 99% of people now infected with the virus would recover in 7 to 10 days, in comments reported by the People’s Daily, controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

But there are signs the reassuring new message has still to convince many of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

With the need for tests dropped and most infected people now being allowed to isolate at home, some have embraced new found freedoms. For others, habits formed under months of stifling lockdowns, are proving hard to break.

There were several empty seats in what should have been peak rush hour for commuters on the Beijing subway on Friday morning, even though the city this week dropped the need to show negative tests to ride trains or enter offices.

Manufacturers and eateries remain cautious too, retaining COVID-19 curbs until they get a clearer picture of just how workplaces will be affected by the easing of stringent measures.

Businesses told Reuters they are expecting to have to grapple with long periods of absence by sick workers that could hamper operations, perhaps for months.

In downtown Beijing on Friday, a restaurant at a mall that serves local cuisine still doesn’t offer dine-in service while others on the same floor do.

“Although we are now allowed to resume eat-in service, our staff are sick and are still at home, so we haven’t got enough hands to serve meals,” a staffer told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

China’s current tally of 5,235 COVID-related deaths is a tiny fraction of its population of 1.4 billion, and extremely low by global standards. Some experts have warned that toll could rise above 1.5 million if the exit is too hasty.

Analysts expect China’s economy to rebound late next year as it follows the rocky path trodden by the rest of the world to open up and live with the disease. But a surge in infections will likely depress growth in the next few months.

A Reuters poll forecast China’s growth to slow to 3.2% in 2022, far below the official target of around 5.5%, marking one of the worst performances in almost half a century.

“China’s three years behind, so what’s going to happen in China is what happened in the rest of the world,” said Jeffrey Goldstein, a China-based consultant who helps foreign brands manufacture goods in Asia.

“There’s going to be chaos.”

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Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south..

* Spain has stepped up security at public and diplomatic buildings after a spate of letter bombs, including one sent to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and another to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, where an official suffered minor injuries.

* Air raid alerts were issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes. “An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” country’s border service wrote on Telegram messaging app.

* Ukraine’s military said it had found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, and that their apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.

* European Union governments tentatively agreed on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, with an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, an EU diplomat said.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

* Lavrov said that discussions with Washington about potential prisoner exchanges were being conducted by the two countries’ intelligence services, and that he hoped they would be successful.

* The European Union needs patience as it sanctions Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as most measures will only have an impact in the medium and long term, Lithuania’s prime minister said in an interview at  the  Reuters NEXT conference.

* Switzerland has frozen financial assets worth 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($7.94 billion) as of Nov. 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said.

* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.

* Ukraine sacked a top engineer at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Russian forces, and urged other Ukrainian staff at the plant to remain loyal to Kyiv.

* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.

* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff.

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