SDG 14: Life Below Water

SDG 14: Life below Water

If your research contributes to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life below Water add the keyword "SDG 14", "SDG14: Life below Water" and/or "Sustainable Development Goals" to your article/book/chapter/conference paper/ dataset and we will automatically add it to this rapidly growing collection of research outputs. See the instructions here. 

Oceans and fisheries continued to support the global population’s economic, social and environmental needs while suffering unsustainable depletion, environmental deterioration and carbon dioxide saturation and acidification. Current efforts to protect key marine environments and small-scale fishers and invest in ocean science are not yet meeting the urgent need to protect this vast, fragile resource.

The ocean absorbs around 23 per cent of the annual emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, helping to alleviate the impacts of climate change on the planet, however, resulting in a decreasing pH and acidification of the ocean. A new ocean acidification data portal shows an increase in variability in pH and the acidity of the oceans by 10 to 30 per cent in the period 2015–2019. 

The sustainability of global fishery resources continues to decline, though at a reduced rate, with the proportion of fish stocks within biologically sustainable levels at 65.8 per cent in 2017, down from 90 per cent in 1974 and 0.8 percentage point lower than 2015 levels. 

As at December 2019, more than 24 million km2, or 17 per cent, of waters under national jurisdiction (up to 200 nautical miles from shore) were covered by protected areas, more than doubling in extent since 2010. Much of the coverage is concentrated in Oceania and Latin America and the Caribbean.

As at February 2020, the number of parties to the Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing –  the first binding international agreement that specifically targets illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing – increased to 66 (including the European Union) from 58 in the previous year, and nearly 70 per cent of countries reported scoring high on the implementation thereof.

The contribution of sustainable marine capture fisheries remained stable at the global level, with regional variation, representing the largest contribution to the GDP in Pacific small island developing States and least developed countries, averaging 1.55 and 1.15 per cent, respectively, in 2011 to 2017. 

Source: Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, Report of the Secretary-General, https://undocs.org/en/E/2020/57

Join us at ScienceOpen in collectively curating a list of research articles by tagging your work via keywords, either through the publication process with your publisher, or after the fact by adding keywords to your work on ScienceOpen.

If your research contributes to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life below Water add the keyword "SDG 14", "SDG14: Life below Water" and/or "Sustainable Development Goals" to your article/book/chapter/conference paper/ dataset and we will automatically add it to this rapidly growing collection of research outputs. See the instructions here: 

To raise awareness for this important research, the UN Sustainable Development Goals on ScienceOpen collection is promoted throughout the discovery environment in search menus, as "Related collection" banners and article recommendations. If you are working on a particular SDG you can add your work to the collection in 4 easy steps:

1. Register on ScienceOpen at https://www.scienceopen.com/register.
2. Link to your ORCID profile (or create an ORCID ID): This will automatically add your publication list to ScienceOpen.
3. Choose the relevant article and then click on "Add keywords" from your profile page.
4. Add the relevant SDG(s) to the keyword section, for example "SDG 1" or "SDG1: No poverty" and/or "Sustainable Development Goals" and then hit save! Your article will now be automatically added to the relevant collection within 24 hours. You can also add a lay summary, catchy image, disciplines and data availability statements to your work to increase its visibility.

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