20 October 2015: At a Regional Seas Meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners announced an initiative on ‘Oceans Sustainable Development Goals’ to foster regional cooperation and strategies in support of the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 on oceans, as well as other SDGs in which oceans is a cross-cutting issue.

The initiative, developed under the umbrella of the Partnership for Regional Oceans Governance (PROG), is a collaboration between UNEP, Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI). It aims to support ocean management and governance by: identifying lessons learned and developing innovative approaches to regional ocean governance; promoting regional exchange; and fostering the role of regional ocean governance approaches at the global level through engaging in multi-stakeholder processes.

The project will commence by commissioning scoping papers on the state of regional oceans governance and the importance of oceans to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It then will support processes in selected pioneer regions to help meet and monitor Goals and targets relevant to oceans.

Goal 14 calls to: “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.” It contains seven substantive targets and three targets on means of implementing the Goal.

The UNEP Regional Seas Meeting took place on 20 October 2015. [UNEP Press Release] [UNEP Regional Seas Programme Website] [IASS Press Release] [SDG 14]