HOW LIFE BELOW WATER IMPACTS ZERO

HUNGER(GOAL 2)

The world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. If recent trends continue,
the number of people affected by hunger would surpass 840 million by 2030.

According to the World Food Programme, 135 million suffer from acute

hunger largely due to man-made conflicts, climate change and economic downturns.
The COVID-19 pandemic could now double that number, putting an additional 130
million people at risk of suffering acute hunger by the end of 2020.

This section challenges the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) ‘Zero hunger’ to
link closer with the SDG ‘Life below water’ promoting the conservation and
sustainable use of the marine (and we add freshwater) resources. According to
HLPE (2014) the qualities of fish are not fully recognized in global food security.
Consumption of fish and its contribution to the diets, especially of low income
populations and vulnerable Groups such as pregnant women and lactating mothers,
offers important means of improving nutrition.

Despite this, fish is strikingly missing from strategies for reduction of nutrient
deficiency, precisely where it could potentially have the largest impact.
Moreover, for food insecure households, the ability to purchase other food
items with incomes generated through the utilization of marine and
freshwater resources is vital for ensuring their nutritional status. Thus
governance ensuring access for poor, unemployed and marginalized groups
to sustainably harvest and market marine and freshwater resources such as
fish, shells and seaweed is crucial.

Fish production leaves behind a substantially smaller carbon footprint than

meat production and seafood is increasingly in demand as luxury, healthy
and ‘environmentally friendly’ food among the middle class in expanding
urban areas in both the Global North and South. Thus, whereas promoting
the goal of increased fish consumption is legitimate from both a health and
sustainability perspective, it also implies challenges of inequalities in the
accessibility and affordability of marine and freshwater food consumption.
The world’s capture fisheries are increasingly approaching planetary
boundaries, largely caused by rich countries’ heavy subsidizing of their
capital intensive industrial fishing fleets resulting in overcapacity and
overfishing, often occurring illegally in poorer countries with weak regulation
enforcement. During the last two decades, growth in the world’s per capita
fish supply has therefore mainly occurred through expanding marine and
freshwater aquaculture. Whereas aquaculture expansion could have a
potential of contributing to feeding an increasing world population with
nutritious fish, this industry also causes challenges concerning
environmental impact and usage of wild fish that could have been used for
human consumption as well as agricultural food products such as soya and
wheat for fish feed.
HOW LIFE BELOW WATER IMPACTS AFFORDABLE
AND CLEAN ENERGY(GOAL 7)

Conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas and marine resources is one of
most important aspect of “life below water” sdg. And one of its main target is to
increase economic benefit from sustainable use of marine resources. It states “By
2030, increase the economic benefits to small island developing States and least
developed countries from the sustainable use of marine resources, including through
sustainable management of fisheries, aquaculture and tourism.” 14.7: Increase the
So if we keep in mind this target of our topic we can easily achieve clean and
affordable energy using hydroelectricity but we have to keep in mind that this
affordable and clean energy can’t get over relied on hydroelectricity as water
resources are limited and we can’t use our rivers for purely these purposes as
it can be harmful for all marine animals and plants because these creatures
have to be sacrificed for achieving hydroelectricity .So we have to keep a
balance between two like reduced land degradation can help us in leading to less
run-off and water pollution which is a positive point of this balance we need to
maintain but increased pressure on water resources to irrigate bioenergy crops is not
an acceptable trade off as it may improve the condition of clean energy but can
make it worse for marine life. Also over reliance on hydroelectricity will make it only
affordable but would be a real problem for marine life.