Contribution
It is a privilege to speak in support of this Bill. This is a hugely important step that, as the Minister laid out, will finally allow the United Kingdom to ratify the high seas treaty and play its full part in protecting our shared global ocean. That is something that I hope Members across the Chamber will support. I share in congratulations to the Minister on keeping her word that she gave as shadow Minister. That is really good to see.
The Bill comes at a crucial time. After more than a decade of negotiation, this treaty is one of the greatest biodiversity conservation victories in history. It is a landmark moment for global ocean governance, setting out for the first time a clear legal framework for establishing ocean sanctuaries and area-based management tools on the high seas, two-thirds of which lie beyond national borders and are therefore currently lawless. We refer to our rainforests as our planet’s lungs, but our oceans are just as important for biodiversity, regulating our climate, absorbing almost a third of human-made carbon dioxide, and sustaining billions of people around the world. As we have heard, they are also under extraordinary pressure from overfishing, plastic pollution and the growing threat of deep-sea mining. The treaty is currently the only viable pathway to meeting the global 30 by 30 biodiversity goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s ocean before 2030. Currently, less than 1% of the high seas is fully protected, so time is running out to meet that goal by the end of the decade.
I welcome the Bill, which provides the legal framework for the UK to deliver on the high seas treaty’s three central pillars: first, the fair sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources, the DNA and data of ocean life; secondly, the creation of marine protected areas and area-based management tools on the high seas; and thirdly, stronger environmental impact assessments to prevent harmful activities before they happen. This has to be fair for developing nations, and capacity building and technology transfer is central to that.
This is personal to me. Before entering Parliament, I spent over a decade working professionally on the creation of marine protected areas in east Africa and South America. I helped to create the first ever multiple-use marine reserve, together with fishermen and Government in Zanzibar on Misali island. I then spent several years mediating conflict and reaching consensus between fishermen, tour operators, the Galapagos national park, and the Government, to help create the Galapagos marine reserve, which at that time was one of the largest MPAs created. Since then I have been involved in work towards international marine governance beyond national jurisdiction, the high seas treaty, as well as the UK’s Blue Belt programme, and I worked with communities and officials on all those overseas territories. I have seen at first hand what is at stake, from working with fishermen to prevent the destruction of coral reefs by dynamite fishing, to the terrifying news that we have reached the first climate tipping point, with our precious and beautiful warm-water coral reefs now in irreversible decline, putting at threat the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
I have also mediated negotiations with the fishing sector on deep-water fishing to find sustainable fishing quotas and standards for tuna fishing, while protecting vital marine corridors for our endangered marine mammals and birds. I have dived along those, tagging whale sharks to understand the routes that they take across the high seas, beyond national jurisdictions. That is often the wild west, where we are facing the “tragedy of the commons”, and there are no agreed rules or governance to stop everyone in the race from taking as much as possible before someone else does.
That is why it is so important to highlight that the global ocean treaty could provide a legal mechanism to address the “blue hole” in the south Atlantic—a region requiring agreements about what is sustainable fishing practice, and ways effectively to deter terribly unsustainable activity. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a coherent ocean policy, and an ocean strategy that links the global commitments we make through the Bill to stronger domestic action on marine protection, sustainable fishing and pollution at home.
The UK was instrumental in securing an ambitious treaty text at the UN, and we should take pride in that. However, as other Members have said, we must be honest: the UK was not among the first 60 nations to ratify that treaty, and that matters because where Britain leads, others follow. The commitments being made today must be matched with commitments to sustainable fisheries management and marine conservation back in our own waters. Our credibility and moral authority on the world stage is under threat when Ministers seem to say that we might not implement an outright ban on bottom trawling, despite pledging earlier this year to extend the ban on bottom-towed fishing gear to offshore protected areas.
I was a member of the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into marine governance, which recommended the ban on bottom trawling ahead of the UN ocean conference, and we commended the Government on their announcement at that time. I fully support the Committee Chair’s response, which repeats the Committee’s call to completely ban bottom trawling within offshore MPAs, and pleads with the Minister and the Government to take the right decision on the back of the consultation that is happening now, and not to undermine the integrity of our protected waters.
In conclusion, the Liberal Democrats are clear: we support the Bill, and we urge the Government to bring forward ratification swiftly—I hope Members across the Chamber will support that—so that the UK has a seat at the table when Ocean COP1 takes place, and going forward.