UN Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life below waterLife below water worldwide

Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations have issued 17 ambitious goals to try and build a better, fairer, and more sustainable future for the world.

Sustainable Development Goal 14 aims to protect our marine enviroments from pollution, over-fishing, and climate change.

Our planet's oceans and seas play a crucial role in making life on Earth possible. We rely on them for rain and drinking water, they regulate our weather and climate, and they provide billions of people with food and work.

We need to do more to protect our oceans:

• water quality is being reduced by pollution
• global heating is warming seas and making them more acidic
• overfishing is damaging ecosystems and is unsustainable

Watch this video to find out more about the need to protect our oceans.

The sea provides oxygen to the air that we breathe and soaks up around 30 per cent of the CO₂ produced by humans. (Source: United Nations)

The sea supports a huge network of fish, other animals, and plants. The health of our seas is essential for marine biodiversity. Around the world over three billion people rely on the oceans for food and for jobs. (Source: United Nations)

Life below water facts

• Marine fisheries directly or indirectly employ over 200 million people.
• The proportion of fish stocks within biologically sustainable levels was at 65.8 per cent in 2017, down from 90 per cent in 1974.
• Roughly 80 per cent of marine and coastal pollution originates on land – including agricultural run-off, pesticides, plastics and untreated sewage.

Source: UN Sustainable Development Goals