Challenge 2 of the UN Ocean Decade focuses on protecting and restoring marine ecosystems and biodiversity as a fundamental requirement to achieve sustainable development. Addressing this challenge requires reliable and timely information on biodiversity and ecosystems. To achieve this, academic, government, and private groups should engage in a process of co-design that aims to facilitate decision-making at the local and national level, and agree on common and interoperable practices for the collection and curation of biology and ecosystem information. Implementing the flow of data to enable the management of human activities and sustainable development will require the sharing of capacity. An all-hands-on-deck effort will help us ensure a better future for ourselves. A positive step would be to identify the minimum essential ocean variables that can serve multiple relevant regional and international frameworks and to link and harmonize the required data and information flow (i.e., for frameworks including the Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement, the International Seabed Authority, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and deep and national ocean fisheries policies). A key strategy is to support and build on existing local and national networks for biodiversity observation. With this information, local communities and nations can better understand and manage how they use marine life and also report on progress toward Sustainable Development Goals.
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