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Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich 1 , generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats 2 , and contribute to the health 3 , wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities 4 . The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these findings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. To account for how context-specific environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects affect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefits and trade-offs at national and international scales. We find that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B 12 and omega-3 deficiencies. Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact. The analytical framework we provide also identifies countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefits and trade-offs associated with pursuing these objectives., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The human attachment to plastic has intensified recently due to its lightweight, versatility, low-cost and durability and so has the damage to the marine environment as marine plastic pollution has correspondingly increased. As a result, there has been increasing concern on the issue of marine plastic pollution. Policy-based organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme have drawn public attention to the scope, magnitude and impacts of marine pollution in recent decades. Research on marine pollution can play a significant role in contributing to policy-making processes in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal on Life Below Water (SDG 14), by providing scientific analysis on the effects and sources of marine plastic pollution. This paper provides a theoretical and empirical overview of marine plastic pollution and its potential effects on marine ecosystems. It also discusses SDGs that are relevant to marine plastic pollution and suggest priorities for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformations towards sustainability are needed to address many of the earth's profound environmental and social challenges. Yet, actions taken to deliberately shift social–ecological systems towards more sustainable trajectories can have substantial social impacts and exclude people from decision-making processes. The concept of just transformations makes explicit a need to consider social justice in the process of shifting towards sustainability. In this paper, we draw on the transformations, just transitions, and social justice literature to advance a pragmatic framing of just transformations that includes recognitional, procedural and distributional considerations. Decision-making processes to guide just transformations need to consider these three factors before, during and after the transformation period. We offer practical and methodological guidance to help navigate just transformations in environmental management and sustainability policies and practice. The framing of just transformations put forward here might be used to inform decision making in numerous marine and terrestrial ecosystems, in rural and urban environments, and at various scales from local to global. We argue that sustainability transformations cannot be considered a success unless social justice is a central concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]