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 1^st to the 10^th 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.