Benjamin Boteler (Ecologic Institute) and Helen Klimmek (IUCN) represented AQUACROSS at the 2016 IUCN World Congress, which took place in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, from the 1st to the 10th of September, 2016. Held every four years, the IUCN World Congress is the world’s largest recurring conservation event, attended by more than 6000 scientists, conservationists, business-leaders, policymakers, and more. Benjamin and Helen met with a broad number of international participants and discussed the role of and ways forward for ecosystem based management in the EU and beyond. A key part of the discussions in Hawaii focussed on the achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals.  On this topic, AQUACROSS published an internationally-focused policy brief to coincide with the event. The policy brief, “Managing aquatic biodiversity: from local to global – an EU perspective,” shows the links between EU targets for biodiversity and global targets of the SDGs as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Aichi Biodiversity Targets.