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Climate change and urban development threaten health, undermine coping and deepen existing social and environmental inequities. A changing global environment requires transformative social responses: new partnerships, deep engagement with local communities, and innovation to strengthen individual and collective assets. The chapters of this edited volume have mainly been contributed by established and emerging scholars representing social work, sociology, development studies, law, government, social anthropology, urbanism, public policy, and other social sciences This book is to be used for academics, policy makers, social work students, lecturers and other stakeholders to promote advocacy for vulnerable client groups affected by climate change. It gives some measure of hope and makes the invisible visible, allowing for change.

The ocean plays a central role in the life and development of human kind. Besides space for navigation and trade (roughly 10 billion tons of commodities are transported across the oceans each year), the provision of biological and non-living resources is the most important service of the marine ecosystems. Yet, these ecosystems are increasingly impeded by human activities and interventions. Human and naturally induced changes in climate are buffered by the ocean, but its capacity to compensate the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is at its limit. The increase of global temperatures and the decrease of oxygen concentration and pH are severe stressors for aquatic species and thus for the whole ecosystem. Urbanisation and population growth at the coast, along with severe levels of pollution, are stressing coastal environments and hampering or interrupting life cycles of species as well as the well established and naturally balanced internal interconnections within and between ecosystems. Mining for oil and gas is interfering with fisheries, competing for space with other sectors and increasing the risks for large scale pollution. The result is a decline in ecosystem services and a negative feedback into the socio-economic systems. The recent reports by IPBES and IPCC underline the degrading conditions in which the ecosystems are situated today. The IPBES report evaluates a number of direct and indirect drivers. Population increase, technical development, malfunctioning of governance and spreading of conflicts affect direct drivers such as sea use change, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution, invasive species and others. Following a series of summits and conventions that prompted the United Nations in recent decades, Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Johannesburg in 2002 and Rio+20 in 2012, all of which were rather land-based, the Sustainable Development Goals 2015 set a new landmark in which the ocean, too, was finally acknowledged as significant to global development. The Ocean Conference in New York in June 2017 led the international community to formulate clear goals for the development of the ocean. The volume Transitioning to Sustainable Life below Water will address critical issues in ocean use and reflect against goals and targets of SDG 14 and other relevant SDGs. Transitioning to Sustainable Life below Water is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. The book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries. •The chapters listed below, are pre-publication chapters and the final page numbers will be assigned once the book is published as a whole. For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated below:(Author 1, and Author 2. 2021. Chapter Title in Transistioning to Sustainable Life below Water. Edited by Werner Ekau and Anna-Katharina Hornidge.

Transitioning to Good Health and Well-Being addresses critical issues of health in the context of sustainability, which need to be tackled in order to achieve Agenda 2030. Acknowledging the dramatic improvements that have been made in the past decades with regards to health, we also face disparities that remain amongst and within countries. While life expectancy has more than doubled, we are, at the same time, confronted with the challenges that come along with population growth alongside environmental change, migration, ageing, and economic disparities. In its 2018 progress report concerning SDG 3, the UN stated that, while the quality of global health is increasing, “people are still suffering needlessly from preventable diseases”, both infectious and non-communicable,'and too many are dying prematurely'. Although we are on the verge of eradicating, poliomyelitis, which disables 350'000 children each year, we continue to have few answers for outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases. Making progress against these outbreaks with strong health systems, particularly in neglected or inaccessible regions, is deeply connected to further issues targeted by the UN SDGs such as (restricted) access to clean water, healthy food, or continuing political instabilities as well as gender inequalities. Transitioning to Good Health and Well-Being, therefore, offers a vessel for a productive reflection and conversation on the meaning of and possibilities for global health, giving voice to a range of scholars, strategists and practitioners. Transitioning to Good Health and Well-Being is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. The book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries.

Transitioning to No Poverty is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. Set to be published in 2020/2021, the book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries.

Gender Equality, the fifth UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5), aims for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls. It thereby addresses all forms of violence, unpaid and unacknowledged care and domestic work, as well as the need for equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life. In this volume, we focus on three main areas of inquiry, ‘Sexuality', ‘Politics of Difference'and ‘Care, Work and Family', and raise the following transversal questions: How can gender be addressed in an intersectional perspective, linking gender to further categories of difference, which are involved in discrimination? In which ways are binary notions of gender taking part in inequality regimes and by which means can these binaries be questioned? How can we measure, control and portray progress with regard to gender equality and how do we, in doing so, define gender? Which multi-, inter- or transdisciplinary perspectives are needed for understanding the diversity of gender, in order to support a transition to'gender equality'? Transitioning to Gender Equality is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. The book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries.