Target 14.2: Sustainably manage and protect marine ecosystems
By 2020, sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts, including by strengthening their resilience, and take action for their restoration in order to achieve healthy and productive oceans
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Marine and coastal ecosystem health depends on the conduct of seafood, aquaculture, shipping, offshore energy and deep-sea mining companies. InfluenceMap's April 2025 assessment found that of the 30 largest seafood companies only Bolton Group supports science-aligned biodiversity policy. Pacific Seafood and Cooke showed the most oppositional advocacy, and Cargill, Mowi and Mitsubishi lobbied against aquaculture regulation. The National Fisheries Institute opposed marine protected areas, bottom-trawling limits and fish-farm pollution rules. On deep-sea mining, 64 companies and financial institutions have signed a business statement for a moratorium. Firms including Rio Tinto, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank are separately listed as supporting one. Microsoft has pledged not to use minerals sourced from the deep seabed until proper research is completed, showing corporate conduct can be moved. As You Sow's biodiversity program extends shareholder pressure to the deep ocean, winning commitments from First Solar and General Motors to exclude deep-sea mined minerals from their supply chains. Governments still designate and enforce protection, so owners supply a necessary input rather than the whole outcome.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files shareholder proposals asking automakers and clean energy companies to adopt sourcing policies that exclude deep-sea mined minerals until the environmental risks are scientifically assessed.
Coordinates a collaborative engagement of 45 investors with 9.6 trillion dollars in assets asking seven seafood companies to build portfolio-wide traceability systems to manage overfishing and supply chain risk.
4 campaigns on record
Develop comprehensive traceability systems across their seafood portfolios with clear implementation timelines, treating traceability as essential to managing overfishing and supply chain risk.
Result: Four of seven companies have made traceability commitments; five of seven lack robust implementation plans
Traceability commitments doubled to four of the seven engaged companies.
Commit to a moratorium on sourcing minerals from deep-sea mining.
Result: Blocked by company at SEC; not voted
Tesla Inc: Establish a Policy for the Use of Deep Sea Mined Minerals, As You Sow, 2024-12
Implement a sourcing policy excluding deep-sea mined minerals from its supply chains until scientific findings are sufficient to assess the material environmental risks.
Result: Withdrawn, agreement reached
As You Sow reports a public assurance from General Motors against using deep-sea mined minerals.
General Motors Co: Establish a Policy for the Use of Deep Sea Mined Minerals, As You Sow, 2024-12
Commit to a moratorium on sourcing electric vehicle battery metals from deep-sea ecosystems.
Result: About 6 percent support at the June 14, 2024 annual meeting; Tesla reported 78 percent voted against
Tesla shareholders vote no on deep sea mining moratorium, MINING.COM (Bloomberg), 2024-06
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.