Issue Paper: A preliminary assessment of indicators for SDG 14 on ‘Oceans’

‘Tackling the Challenges of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Monitoring’ is an important topic of which at different levels of government actors are facing many challenges. Hence, this Issue paper focuses on indicators for the SDG 14 on oceans, seas and marine resources, which consists of 10 individual targets. The paper describes the nature of these SDG 14 indicators and provides an overview of the factors that have an impact on the effectiveness of monitoring the SDG 14 targets. It reviews the existing framework for the SDG 14 indicators including uncertainty, irreversibility and thresholds in the marine context, and transboundary and terrestrial-marine spatial considerations at the regional and national levels. It examines potential synergies with Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) indicators, the role of big data, links among the SDG 14 targets and between SDG 14 and other SDGs targets. It touches upon the indicative correspondences of SDG 14 indicators to the United Nations (UN) System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) definitions.