156 Parliamentarians, two Parliamentary Committees and 350,000 members of the public are now calling on Government to get on and complete our network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
Today I am in Westminster for the launch of a Charter which has been signed by 133 MPs and 23 Peers. It calls on Government for ‘the swift designation of a representative and well managed Ecologically Coherent Network of Marine Protected Areas in UK Seas by 2016’. It’s an incredible endorsement across all political parties for the protection of our seas. What we must see in the following months is this call translated into designation of new MPAs and effective management introduced to protect our marine life from damaging human activities.
There is a great deal packed into the Charter commitment, so let’s break it down and explain what it all means and what we are asking Government to do:
Firstly, our MPA network needs to be ‘ecologically coherent’. This means ensuring that all components of marine life are protected, and the sum of all MPAs is greater than its parts. A number of criteria sit beneath this term, which together help ensure that our MPA network is sensibly and systematically designed and includes the most productive and biodiverse parts of the sea.
The recent designation of MPAs in Scotland has filled some of the gaps in our network, and as long as the majority of the 37 possible Marine Conservation Zones for England are designated in 2015, we will have made some great steps forward for the UK.
But there are still important bits missing. A report commissioned by Link in 2014 looked at the network of MPAs around the UK, and identified where these gaps in our network are. For example, the exclusion of whales, dolphins and seabirds in England’s MPA network is a glaring omission. We know that there are parts of the sea that they regularly use to feed and breed and it is these sites that must be protected. The Wildlife Trusts have just produced a report which highlights parts of the sea that must be protected for our whales and dolphins. The RSPB has been pushing Government for years to ensure that places that seabirds use to feed are better protected, and we will continue to make sure that seabirds have the protection they need at sea.
Secondly, our MPA network needs to be ‘well managed’, because right now it isn’t. Well-managed means ensuring that those human activities which are damaging habitats and species in our MPAs are stopped. It also means that we we take a ‘precautionary approach’ to ensure that lack of complete certainty about human impacts is not a barrier to effective protection.
And thirdly, the 2016 deadline means it needs to be ‘swift’, partly because our marine life needs to urgent protection and partly because we have made commitments to put in place this network by 2016. And that’s only 13 months away.