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By 2030, protected and restore water related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes. Freshwater ecosystems have enormous biological, environmental, social, educational and economic value and provide range of goods and services upon which people and all life depend on.

Oceans cover the bulk of the Earth's surface. They provide vital environmental economic and social benefits to humanity, including food, marine biodiversity, carbon sinks, trade tourism and cultural identity to coastal communities.

Million of people around the Asia-Pacific region remain exposed to a higher frequency and intensity of natural hazards from locust swarms and earthquakes to cyclone and other exceptional events.

The vital importance of the oceans for human life and the development of livelihoods is recognized in Sustainable development coal 14 (life below water) and its trade related targets, as well as in subsequent national and international declarations.

The goal for the General Assembly in creating the Regular Process for the Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects, was to ensure a comprehensive overview of the ocean and the relationships between the ocean and humans, covering all environmental, social and economic aspects. Such an overview would serve as a background to the many decisions that must be taken in that field at the international, national and local levels in pursuit of sustainable development. The first World Ocean Assessment was completed in 2015 and represents a major step towards that goal.

Coastal communities play a key role in supporting all components of the ocean economy, as well as a range of social and cultural values, and all forms of coastal and marine management governance. This ocean supports a wide range of economic activities, including the harvesting of food, shipping seabed mining, offshore hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation tourism and recreation use of marine genetic resources, production of fresh water by desalinization and production of salt.

The Asia and the Pacific Sustainable Development Goals Progress Report 2021 comes at a time when the effects of Covid-19 pandemic have already been felt across the economic, social and environments dimensions of development. in 2020, at the dawn of the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), how was Asia and the Pacific faring? And how is the Covid-19 pandemic impacting progress the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific?

The Ocean Dialogue was mandated by COP25 in the last month of 2020. This was a year in which people around the world faced the global health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we struggle with the wave of consequences of the pandemic, we must urgently consider moving forward in both greener and bluer ways in order to minimize the even larger wave of consequences of climate change heading our way. Consequences that will increasingly impact the sustainable development of many countries.