When Measurement Misses the Target: Sustainable Development Goal Indicator 14.7.1 in Small Island Developing States

• Suyu Liu ^[1]
  1. [1] Community of Learning and Practice on Drought Management, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Bonn, Germany
• Localización: Thalassas: An international journal of marine sciences, ISSN 0212-5919, Vol. 42, Nº. 2, 2026
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are among the most ocean-dependent economies, yet their economic reliance on marine resources is only partially reflected in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) monitoring. This paper provides a conceptual and analytical examination of the alignment between SDG Target 14.7, which emphasizes the economic benefits of sustainable ocean use for SIDS, and SDG Indicator 14.7.1, which operationalizes this target through the value added of marine fisheries as a share of GDP. Drawing on existing statistical and accounting frameworks, SDG documentation, and selected country illustrations, the analysis shows that Indicator 14.7.1 exhibits limited interpretive specificity in data-scarce contexts including SIDS, where changes in indicator values cannot be readily attributed to shifts in sustainability, sectoral performance, or broader economic structure. These limitations are not the result of oversight, but reflect well-recognized trade-offs in global indicator design between multiple and often competing factors such as feasibility, comparability, and contextual sensitivity. As a consequence, reliance on Indicator 14.7.1 alone may not adequately reflect the significance of marine resources for highly ocean-dependent economies including SIDS. The article argues that complementary indicators, contextual interpretation, regional cooperation, and strengthened statistical capacity would offer pragmatic pathways to enhance the usefulness of SDG monitoring for SIDS, without revising the core indicator framework. More broadly, the findings highlight a generic challenge in applying globally standardized sustainability indicators to heterogeneous national contexts