This SDG Knowledge Weekly spotlights recent findings and platforms on SDG 14 (life below water). The brief also reviews a few items on decarbonization towards SDG 13 (climate action), which researchers note plays a key role in ocean-related challenges.
Life on earth is utterly dependent on healthy oceans. They produce much of the oxygen we breathe, cycle the carbon dioxide, and regulate the weather we experience. Perhaps it is the vastness of the oceans that has made us complacent about its capacity to keep absorbing our toxic wastes?
After a year of global ocean meetings, the international community is finally facing up to the reality of polluted, depleted oceans.
Policies to protect the marine environment that do not address the finite nature of our world will fail.
The tropical atolls known for their sublime beaches and lush coral reefs are struggling to keep a poison tide at bay: In the small island countries and territories dotting the oceans, mercury from polluting industries has become a public-health crisis.
Tests of hair samples from hundreds of women in small-island countries and territories found 75 percent had mercury levels high enough to cause fetal neurological damage.
Nearly 60 percent of the women had mercury levels exceeding a threshold beyond which brain damage, IQ loss, and kidney and cardiovascular damage can occur.
The report attributed the mercury pollution in fisheries in these regions to air emissions of the toxic heavy metal emanating from coal-fired power plants and artisanal gold mining.
