NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, June 7, 2018

By Tim McDonnell

Of the U.N.’s 17 goals to make the world a better place by 2030, one goal gets much less respect than the others.

It’s not improving education. It’s not wiping out poverty and hunger.

It’s Goal #14 — which aims to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

A new survey of 3,500 leaders in developing countries found that marine conservation is almost universally considered the least important of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals – essentially a checklist of priorities to help poor countries and aid organizations focus their attention on lifting the world’s most vulnerable people to a higher standard of living.

Several of the goals deal explicitly with environmental issues, and the new survey, conducted by the AidData research center at the College of William and Mary, is the latest indication that these may be getting short shrift — despite oceans of evidence that protecting the environment leads to big development gains in the forms of jobs and food.