Marine Spatial Planning in Scotland – a stock take
In recent years Scottish Government has progressed leaps and bounds towards meeting their vision for Scotland’s seas that are ‘clean, healthy, safe, productive, biologically diverse marine and coastal environments, managed to meet the long term needs of nature and people.’ Our first National Marine Plan and the designation of 33 new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are unprecedented steps, which deserve applause and congratulations. Yet we need to ensure we don’t get ahead of ourselves with said approbation; there is still a great deal to be done and we won’t be resting on our laurels anytime soon. Just beyond the horizon are the ratifications of the measures to manage those MPAs; a whole new suite of marine Special Protection Areas for seabirds and Special Areas of Conservation for marine mammals plus the ‘local’ tier of marine plans, in the form of 11 Regional Marine Plans (RMPs). All of which are to be delivered in the coming months and years.
The designation of protected areas for nature is a well-rehearsed act and RSPB Scotland will be using all the tools available to us to ensure Government do indeed achieve what they have committed to do and establish ‘an ecologically coherent and well-managed network of marine protected areas’ by the end of 2016. We have high hopes given Richard Lochhead’s (Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment ) recent commitments to secure, from our MPA network, long-term benefits both for the environment and our coastal communities. Especially as he has avoided simply reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to vociferous lobbying voices of the mobile fishing industry. Time and again research is proving that robust management of MPAs that excludes, in the right places, the most damaging fishing practices actually contributes positively to healthier ecosystems and stronger commercial stocks into the future. We look forward to these commitments holding fast.
Perhaps, however, less well rehearsed, is the development of a new framework for sustainably managing our seas called marine spatial planning, which has been emerging since the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. RSPB Scotland has consistently championed the virtues of town planning on land and the marine environment is no different, indeed we believe that marine spatial planning is central to delivering on Scottish Government’s vision for our seas. Marine planning is the thread that ties together fisheries, aquaculture, environment, tourism, renewables, shipping, oil and gas and more. It enables an oversight of the challenges, pressures and opportunities available to all sectors, which ultimately enables robust, informed and improved decision-making for the long-term.
The next step is the delivery and adoption of RMPs, which sit under and are to be guided by Scotland’s first National Marine Plan adopted in March 2015. This represents an entirely new area of work requiring adequate resourcing and commitment from Government to ensure ambitions are fulfilled. Marine Planning Partnerships (MPPs), the bodies tasked with writing and delivering the RMPs, are yet to be established although the Clyde region will be one of the first, and yet it is still not clear what Government’s intentions are for supporting the Partnerships and ensuring efficiencies are achieved through, for example, collaborative approaches. Government needs to provide more at this point, not less, adopting the National Marine Plan was just the start and they must now support and empower the marine regions by providing a clear steer and facilitating robust planning and policy decision-making.
We mustn’t underestimate the scale and urgency of this challenge: Scotland’s seas are in a seriously denuded state following decades of a free-for-all approach to extraction and development, exacerbated by the long-term effects of climate change and persistent pollution. The results are stark, in Scotland around half of our seabirds have disappeared since the mid 1980s and Scottish Government’s own trend data show sustained declines since 1986 for nine of 11 seabird species. Arctic skuas have plummeted by 80%, Arctic terns by 72% and kittiwakes by 68%. Seabirds are regarded as sentinels for the health of the marine environment, so what of the rest of Scotland’s marine wildlife? Out of 15 areas of shallow and shelf subtidal sediment habitats 12 areas are shown to have ‘many concerns,’ whilst 56% of all habitat areas assessed are shown to be deteriorating (as assessed in Scotland’s Marine Atlas 2011).
Marine Spatial Planning can meet this challenge and start turning these declines around. It can focus efforts on protection and enhancement of depleted species and habitats that in turn can strengthen the natural marine environment that we ultimately depend on for everything from the fish that we eat to the carbon that we need to store. The problem is that Scotland’s National Marine Plan falls short of being effective, it lacks real substantial guidance for sound policy development at the regional and local levels (see Scottish Environment LINK’s collective view of the NMP). We wanted the National Marine Plan to contribute towards resolving the varied and increasing pressures resulting from all marine activities vying for space and resources within and across our seas. Compromises and difficult decisions need to be made; we simply cannot have growth in every sector as the current plan will have you believe. These challenges now land squarely at the feet of the new Marine Planning Partnerships as we have missed the boat with the current National Plan, and the first review is not scheduled until 2018.
As we transition focus from the National Marine Plan to the Regional Plans, Government needs to redouble their efforts to fill the policy void and commit to adequate resourcing at the regional level. As a priority we believe the focus should be on:
Should Government prioritise these actions the forthcoming RMPs will be much better aligned to delivering a robust planning framework for our increasingly intensively utilised marine environment.
In the year ahead, we look forward to engaging in the development of Marine Planning Partnerships and the process of developing entirely new RMPs. We will be scrutinising proposals with a focus on securing policy that prioritises and enables compromises; is adequately monitored; and is decisive without unnecessarily risking the health of our natural marine heritage.