Better matching of land use with its sustainable potential is a “no-regrets” strategy for sustainably increasing agricultural production on existing land, targeting restoration efforts to where they are likely to be most successful, and guiding biodiversity conservation initiatives. Land potential is defined as the inherent, long-term potential of the land to sustainably generate ecosystem services. This report provides an introduction to land potential evaluation systems, strategies and tools necessary to implement this strategy. It provides information that both private landowners and policymakers can use to increase long-term productivity and profitability, while at the same time addressing global objectives defined through land-related Sustainable Development Goals, and particularly 15.3 (land degradation neutrality).

The Open Ocean Assessment provides a baseline review of issues linking human well-being with the status of the open ocean through the themes of governance, climate change, ocean ecosystems, fisheries, pollution, and integrated assessment of the human-ocean nexus. It uses indices and indicators where data exist, in many cases with future projections due to global climate change, complemented by expert scientific assessment of numerous low certainty but potentially high impact issues where global ocean monitoring is inadequate.

The Groundwater Component of the Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme (TWAP) deals with Transboundary Aquifers (TBAs) and with Groundwater Systems of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). It was executed by the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme (IHP) and represents the first structured baseline assessment of the state of 199 transboundary aquifers and 42 SIDS groundwater systems as a basis for periodic assessments and to develop scenarios of possible future developments.

This LMEs assessment is the first indicator-based global, comparative, baseline assessment of the 66 LMEs. To facilitate the comparative assessment, LMEs were grouped into five colour-coded categories of relative risk, from lowest to highest. Results are at the scale of each entire LME and do not reflect management approaches of any one country within an LME. A sub-set of indicators was also assessed for the Western Pacific Warm Pool.