Marine protected areas offer one of the best options for maintaining or returning ocean and coastal ecosystems to healthy conditions, particularly when developed as part of a wider management system. Ecological benefits come from protecting species, habitats and ecosystem functions. Social benefits come from engaging stakeholders in the planning and the fair sharing of benefits. Economic benefits come from ensuring the long-term sustainable use of natural resources and tourism incomes. The combined impact could support many of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including reducing poverty, improving food security and tackling impacts of climate change.

Sand and dust storms are inter-connected with a range of environmental and development issues that extend across national, regional, and continental bounds. Anthropogenic climate change will further exacerbate decades of unsustainable land and water resource management in regions that generate sand and dust storms. This threat can be diminished by quick and effective action.

The interlacing trends of climate change, population growth, rising consumption, large infrastructure projects and environmental degradation may lead to greater numbers of people displaced in future. This is particularly likely if these trends occur in the context of inadequate responses from governments and the international community to build the resilience of countries and communities to these changes. The most commonly cited figure is that there could be as many as 200 million people displaced for environmental reasons by 2050.

This chapter provides an update on the mitigation challenge associated with the global temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and the estimated global emission levels under various assumptions regarding the implementation of current policies and NDCs or INDCs (hereafter referred to as NDCs, unless specifically mentioned in relation to a country that has not ratified the Paris Agreement).