Inadequacy of mechanisms to protect
important and vulnerable species and habitats
15. Certain marine sites and species in the United
Kingdom are protected under national and European legislation,
and under the terms of international agreements. However, environmental
groups and the conservation agencies argue that the mechanisms
available at present are inadequate. Most national measures, such
as Sites of Special Scientific Interest, should more properly
be thought of as measures to protect coastal rather than truly
marine environments, as they only extend as far as the low water
mark. The Secretary of State has the power to designate Marine
Nature Reserves in waters up to three nautical miles from shore,
but it is widely recognised that operation of this policy has
been ineffective, partly because of difficulties in securing agreement
about where reserves should be sited and in controlling activities
that occur within them.[21]
In addition, various international agreements that aim to protect
certain mobile offshore species, such as whales, dolphins and
porpoises and sharks can be found wanting as our recent report
on cetacean by-catch shows.
16. The main instruments for protecting offshore
areas are the Habitats and Birds Directives. A United Kingdom
court judgement in 1999 found that the Habitats Directive applied
in United Kingdom waters beyond the 12 nautical mile limit of
territorial waters.[22]
The Government is now taking steps to implement the Directive
in offshore waters and has also agreed to take parallel steps
to apply the requirements of the Birds Directive in the same areas.
The offshore area in this context refers to the region from the
12 nautical mile territorial seas limit out to the UK Continental
Shelf limits (up to 200 nautical miles from the coast). However,
protection under these Directives has its limitations.
Marine Environmental Protection
Biodiversity Action Plans
As required by the 1992 Convention on Biological
Diversity, the Government has prepared a national Biodiversity
Action Plan, which sets out its strategy for conserving wild species
and habitats. A number of species and habitat action plans have
been prepared for marine biodiversity, but these are often constrained
by a lack of knowledge.
Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs)
SSSIs are designated under the Wildlife and Countryside
Act 1981. Their purpose is to protect areas of important flora,
fauna, geological and/or physiographical features. The Countryside
and Rights of Way Act (2000) strengthened protection measures
for SSSIs. The boundaries of these sites extend only as far as
the mean low water mark (England and Wales) or the mean low water
spring mark (Scotland) and therefore only cover intertidal areas.
Marine Nature Reserves (MNRs)
MNRs are designated under the Wildlife and Countryside
Act 1981 to conserve inter-tidal and shallow-sea ecosystems and
coastal features. There are three MNRs: Lundy Island; Skomer Island;
and Strangford Lough.
Marine Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)
The EC Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) requires Member
States to designate Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), which
aim to protect areas containing good examples of habitat types
and species considered to be most in need of conservation at a
European level. These SACs, along with Special Protection Areas
(SPAs), classified under the EC Birds Directive, are known as
the Natura 2000 network of important high-quality conservation
sites. Member States must take all the necessary measures to guarantee
the conservation of habitats in special areas of conservation,
and to avoid their deterioration.
Special Protection Areas
Special Protection Areas, designated under the Birds
Directive (79/409/EEC) provide for the protection, management
and control of all species of naturally occurring wild birds in
the European territory of Member States. In particular it requires
Member States to identify areas to be given special protection
for the rare or vulnerable species listed in Annex I (Article
4.1) and for regularly occurring migratory species (Article 4.2)
and for the protection of wetlands, especially wetlands of international
importance. 71 marine SPAs have been designated under the Birds
Directive in the United Kingdom so far.
Ramsar sites
Ramsar sites are designated under the 'Convention
on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl
Habitat' (commonly known as the Ramsar Convention). For the purpose
of this Convention, wetlands include areas of marine water that
are less than six metres deep at low tide.
CITES
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) came into force on 1 July
1975 and imposes controls on the import and export of certain
species, including artefacts made from those species. Trade in
some marine species, such as the basking shark, is restricted
by CITES.
17. The problems fall into three categories: the
scope of the Directives, the availability of information on which
to base decisions and the way potentially damaging activities
are controlled. The Directives are intended to protect sites and
species that are important at the European scale. There are United
Kingdom habitats and species that may need to be protected but
which are not covered by the Directives. Indeed, only 60% of the
actions identified in the marine Biodiversity Action Plan could
be delivered under the Habitats and Birds Directives.
18. A well designed system of protected areas depends
on an accurate understanding of what species and habitats are
present where, the scale and nature of potentially damaging human
activities and the way in which species and ecosystems respond
to those activities. As we discuss in a later section, this knowledge
is, to a large extent, lacking for the offshore environment and
particularly for deeper waters.
19. Designation of sites under the Habitats and Birds
Directives does not in itself confer protection. Instead, licensed
activities that go on in designated sites must undergo an assessment
to determine their likely impact on the features of interest.
Where the activity is judged to be likely to cause damage to the
site, the operator and the licensing authority must agree a management
regime that will minimise and mitigate any damage. Where knowledge
of the site is adequate, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee
believes that the protection mechanism works well.
20. However, the exception to this is where a potentially
damaging activity is not under the direct control of the United
Kingdom. Two of the most important activities—fishing and
shipping—are not. Fishing, particularly deep sea trawling,
was considered by many of our witnesses as the greatest threat
to many marine ecosystems. National governments have a responsibility
to protect sites designated under the Habitats Directive but are
not able to impose fishing restrictions in Community waters, as
that is an EU competency under the Common Fisheries Policy. In
theory, this need not matter as the European Commission can apply
emergency conservation measures if a Member State can show that
a certain fishery is damaging a site protected under the Habitats
or Birds Directive. However, as the example of the Darwin Mounds
and the problems of cetacean by-catch have shown, this mechanism
is woefully inadequate. It took two years to impose fishing restrictions
on the Darwin Mounds, during which time damaging trawling continued.
Fishing
Both the OSPAR Commission Quality Status Report of
2000 and English Nature's maritime State of Nature report listed
fishing as one of the most important factors in the decline of
the marine environment.
Where it is not properly managed, fishing can affect
not only populations of the targeted species but also of others
that are caught unintentionally, and can disturb the sea bed habitat
when heavy gear is dragged along the bottom. English Nature's
report says that 64% of fish stocks in European waters are over-exploited
and the rest are already fully exploited. In addition it is estimated
that for every kilogramme of North Sea sole caught by beam trawl,
up to 14 kg of other seabed animals are killed. Professor Gage
told us that damage to slow-growing deep-water species such as
soft corals would take many years to be repaired.[23]
Lack of knowledge of much of marine
environment
21. Protection of the marine environment, particularly
that of the deep sea, is hampered by a lack of knowledge of which
habitats and species are present and an incomplete understanding
of how marine ecosystems function. Very little of the seabed has
been mapped. In many cases, neither the extent of any existing
damage nor the ecosystem's capacity to recover is known. As we
described above, this lack of knowledge makes it difficult to
designate areas for protection and also makes it harder to manage
activities that have the potential to damage marine ecosystems.
22. This lack of knowledge does not reflect a lack
of expertise. On the contrary, the United Kingdom is home to several
internationally-renowned centres of excellence in marine and fisheries
research. However, the cost of surveys and other research at sea
is very high, particularly for deep waters, and cannot be met
through research funding alone.
23. The problem is not simply one of cost, but also
of using data effectively. Some of the existing databases, for
example those from hydrological, geological and geographical mapping
exercises, are not in the same format. Therefore it is difficult
to achieve a complete picture of the seabed even for areas for
which all this information has been collected. Moreover, the Natural
Environment Research Council and Professor Gage suggested there
may be institutional barriers to different organisations working
together and sharing information, partly because they must compete
against one another for funding.[24]
The Treasury's requirement that publicly funded research institutes
should maximise their income from the data they possess is at
odds with the need to minimise the overall costs of data gathering
by sharing existing data freely.
24. With perhaps the exception of seabed mapping
for the purposes of strategic environmental assessment, much of
the surveying of the marine environment is done on a piecemeal
basis as particular developments are proposed. According to the
Marine Conservation Society,
scientific and activity data is repeatedly collated
for the same stretch of sea by different industries and departments
that represent them. This not only wastes tax payers' money but
also wastes civil servants' time and that of users such as fishermen
who must repeatedly collate and supply the data often in different
formats.[25]
25. We note that the Parliamentary Office of Science
and Technology will be examining some of these issues in the spring
and summer of 2004 and we look forward to their conclusions.
6 Ev 11, Ev 12, Ev 17, Ev 26, Ev 38, Ev 43, Ev 60,
Ev 85, Ev 148, Q1 Back
7
Ev 39, Q276 Back
8
The OSPAR Convention is The Convention for the Protection of the
Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic, which was opened
for signature at the Ministerial Meeting of the Oslo and Paris
Commissions in Paris on 22 September 1992 and entered into force
on 25 March 1998. Back
9
http://www.mceu.gov.uk/MCEU_LOCAL/FEPA/Consents-profile-main.htm Back
10
Ev 26, Ev 29 Back
11
Q79 Back
12
Q290 Back
13
Qq2, 73 Back
14
Qq6, 14 Back
15
Q14 Back
16
Q94 Back
17
Ev 5 Back
18
Q81 Back
19
Qq82-83 Back
20
Ev 48 Back
21
Ev 10 Back
22
CO/1336/99336/99 Back
23
OSPAR Commission 2000, Quality Status Report 2000, p. 86,
R. Covey and D. d'A Laffoley 2002, Maritime State of Nature
Report for England: getting onto an even keel, pp. 58, 72-73,
Ev 74 Back
24
Ev 74-75, Ev 150 Back
25
Ev 6 Back
