In December 2022 at a Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity, the UK Government joined the international commitment to protecting 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030 (the ‘30 by 30’ target). Progress towards this target has been examined by the House of Lords Environment and Climate Committee and their findings published this week in their report;  ‘An extraordinary challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our land and sea by 2030’.

Achieving 30 by 30 requires more areas to be protected and those areas must comply with international criteria. Existing protected areas need to be better managed to achieve favourable condition and they need to be better monitored to enable effective management planning and to measure improvement.

Protection should be afforded to areas in the long-term, which the Committee concluded should be for more than 30 years. They also note that issues around the quantity and quality of protected areas, as well as the monitoring and management of these areas are all magnified in the marine environment.

The report recognises that the complexity of delivering the 30 by 30 target at sea is even greater than on land. Marine monitoring programmes are very limited in their extent, which has led to a paucity of condition assessment data at sea. There needs to be a significant expansion of marine monitoring, both inshore and offshore, to improve both the frequency and the quality of data collected at sea. Relevant bodies need to be sufficiently resourced and funded to deliver this uplift in monitoring.

Chapter 5 summarises the finding of the Committee on achieving protected areas at sea and makes the following recommendations;

• that alongside the map of what will count towards 30 by 30 (due to be published by Defra before the end of 2023) the Government should produce an action plan for achieving 30 by 30 at sea.
• that the Government expand the current marine monitoring programme both inshore and offshore to develop a robust baseline of data that should be made publicly available. This programme should increase the frequency of monitoring and limit data extrapolation by ensuring that a larger sub-section of sites is being monitored on a more regular basis than the current ‘sentinel’ approach. The Government should also explore the option of remote electronic monitoring in the marine monitoring programme. The data produced from the monitoring should be easily accessible and understandable for all to track progress and demonstrate recovery of marine ecosystems.
• an uplift in funding for marine monitoring is needed to ensure more rigorous data collection at sea.
• that the Government better regulate the use of bottom trawling at sea, particularly in MPAs and move to a more holistic site management approach at sea.

The committee also endorsed the recommendation of the 2023 report of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Protecting Marine Mammals in the UK and Abroad, published on 28 June 2023 and calls on the Government to publish an ambitious timescale for the designation of HPMAs and to outline their monitoring and enforcement strategy by the end of 2023.

To read the full report click here.