Examination of the literature on SDG 14-IUU-trade and maritime security

Abstract

The capacity of coastal nations to achieve some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations is being impeded by the practice of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. There has also been an observed overlap between IUU fishing and other forms of transnational organized crime (TOC) at sea. One of the SDGs which are impacted by the unlawful trade in IUU fishing is SDG-14 (Life Below Water). Unsustainable and unregulated trade practices can result in overexploitation of marine resources, all of which are detrimental to SDG-14's goals. In this study, SDG-14 link with IUU, and maritime security is examined within the scope of its effect on maritime trade. The first research objective is to explore the link among those concepts by examining the literature via VOSviewer software and deducing and interpreting the results. The second objective is to examine and review the existing solutions proposed for addressing IUU and, consequently, SDG-14, with the assistance of MAXQDA software. In order to achieve the first objective, articles were sourced from the Web of Science (WoS) which indicated a correlation between SDG-14, IUU, trade and maritime security. In order to achieve the second objective, 12 articles were selected among those for analysis. This research addresses a gap as one of the studies purely focuses on the maritime security dimension of the implementation of SDG-14 -especially SDG-14.4- in terms of preventing IUU. It is concluded that there is a strong link between IUU-SDG-14 and maritime security and that prioritisation should be given among measures to tackle the fight against IUU fishing in order to achieve SDG-14 goals.