15 Aug 2023
15 Aug 2023
The role of natural capital in the green economy
The Environmental Audit Committee is undertaking an inquiry into the current and potential future role of natural capital in the green economy, and the Government’s proposals to increase private investment in measures to support nature recovery. The Committee is inviting contributions on the following questions: What potential contribution can private capital investment make to measures […]
15 Aug 2023
Commercial fishing of Atlantic bluefin tuna back in the UK
Marine environmentalists have reacted with concern at news the UK will allow commercial fishing of bluefin tuna for the first time in 60 years. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have announced that 10 licences would be issued for a small-scale trial of commercial fishing, with the tuna brought ashore for consumption, […]
15 Aug 2023
Protecting the Arctic Ocean
The UN treaty on the high seas, signed in June, succeeded the fishing treaty, as an even more useful legal tool for protecting international waters. To date, all of the Arctic’s protected marine regions have been inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of individual countries. The largest such protected area, designated in 2019, is […]
15 Aug 2023
Recognising & reporting ‘Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures’
Many areas outside national and regional protected area networks contribute to the effective in-situ conservation of biodiversity. Appropriately recognising, reporting and supporting such areas is increasingly important in the context of biodiversity loss and climate change. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recognised early in the CBD’s Strategic Plan (2011-2020) that ‘other effective […]
15 Aug 2023
How to ‘flip’ a paper park: success in the North Sea carries lessons
Dogger Bank, a sandbank in the North Sea was designated a marine protected area more than decade ago to conserve its sensitive seabed habitat. Yet for most of that time, industrial fishing vessels legally dragged damaging gear across the seabed, prompting NGOs to cite it as one of Europe’s emblematic “paper parks,” where the designation […]
15 Aug 2023
Marine Protected Areas overwhelmingly manage with climate change in mind
A paper, published in Conservation Letters, assesses how existing recommendations for climate resilience are applied in real-world MPA management, using criteria from five key management components: objectives, assessments, design, monitoring, and management. The review evaluates 172 management plans for 555 MPAs across 52 countries. The researchers found that MPA management plans contain many underlying scientific […]
15 Aug 2023
Recovery of Great Barrier Reef stalls
A recovery in the number of corals growing on the Great Barrier Reef over recent years has paused, with government scientists blaming bleaching, disease and attacks by starfish. Results from the latest annual surveys of more than 100 individual reefs show a small drop in coral cover over the northern and central parts of the […]
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