Nereus research fellow Gerald Singh (University of British Columbia – UBC) is the lead author with Nereus Program co-authors Joey Bernhardt (UBC), Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC), Yoshi Ota (University of Washington), Vicky Lam (UBC), Gabriel Reygondeau (UBC), William Cheung (UBC) and others on the recently published ‘Climate impacts on the ocean are making the Sustainable Development Goals a moving target travelling away from us’ in the open access journal People and Nature. The article focuses on different ways that climate is impacting humankind’s ability to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The authors found that climate change will negatively impact marine ecosystem services, both locally (e.g., pollution and freshwater runoff) and globally (e.g., ocean warming and acidification). These climate-induced stressors will make it more difficult to achieve SDGs, particularly impacting the goal to eliminate hunger. Some of the least negatively impacted SDGs focus on changing production and consumption practices and developing clean energy, thereby showing their importance in relation to the other SDGs. The authors emphasize that it is important to take urgent action to mitigate and adapt to climate-caused impacts, because delaying is only going to make it more difficult to achieve the SDGs.

Gerald Singh’s original article summary for Nereus can be accessed here.

The above summary was adapted from the abstract of the reference below:

Singh, GG, Hilmi, N, Bernhardt, J, et al. Climate impacts on the ocean are making the Sustainable Development Goals a moving target travelling away from us. People Nat. 2019; 00: 1– 14. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.26 link