Data from: Climate impacts on the ocean are making the Sustainable Development Goals a moving target traveling away from us

1. Climate change is impacting marine ecosystems and their goods and
services in diverse ways, which can directly hinder our ability to achieve
the Sustainable Development Goals, set out under the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development. 2. Through expert elicitation and a literature
review, we find that most climate change effects have a wide variety of
negative consequences across marine ecosystem services, though most
studies have highlighted impacts from warming and consequences to marine
species. 3. Climate change is expected to negatively influence marine
ecosystem services through global stressors – such as ocean warming and
acidification – but also by amplifying local and regional stressors such
as freshwater runoff and pollution load. 4. Experts indicated that all
Sustainable Development Goals would be overwhelmingly negatively affected
by these climate impacts to marine ecosystem services, with eliminating
hunger being among the most directly negatively affected Sustainable
Development Goal. 5. Despite these challenges, the Sustainable Development
Goals aiming to transform our consumption and production practices and
develop clean energy systems are found to be least affected by marine
climate impacts. These findings represent a strategic point of entry for
countries to achieve sustainable development, given that these two goals
are relatively robust to climate impacts and that they are important
pre-requisite for other Sustainable Development Goals. 6. Our results
suggest that climate change impacts on marine ecosystems are set to make
the Sustainable Development Goals a moving target traveling away from us.
Effective and urgent action towards sustainable development, including
mitigating and adapting to climate impacts on marine systems are important
to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, but the longer this action
stalls the more distant these goals will become.