The UK Government has said about £75 million will be invested in schemes to protect the world’s oceans.
This was announced by Environment Secretary Therese Coffey at the Our Ocean conference in Panama on Thursday, where heads of state, civil society and the private sector discuss ways to protect the marine environment.
According to Ms Coffey, £45 million will go towards a new “Blue Tech Superhighway” project, which aims to build collaboration between communities in Africa and Asia who would develop and share technologies to help fisheries become more climate resilient and less damaging to the oceans while the UK will also contribute £24 million to the Global Fund for Coral Reefs and another £4 million to the Blue Carbon Action Partnership as its first donor.
The Blue Carbon Action Partnership is a collection of intergovernmental organisations, state ministries, environmental groups and scientists seeking to build stronger “blue carbon” ecosystems and economies.
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Plants such as mangrove trees, salt marshes and seagrass, which together are present on every continent on Earth except Antarctica are plants that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the coastal environments in which they are found are what constitute the Blue carbon ecosystems.
The Government said a further £1.5 million will go to the Asian Development Bank’s new Blue Pacific Finance Hub to support marine-based economies in the Pacific.
Although the news have been applauded by ocean conservation groups, have welcomed the news, they want the UK to strengthen the protection of marine areas at home and improve its relationships with developing countries to ensure that international negotiations to safeguard the oceans are successful.
“It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of stepping up our efforts to bolster the resilience of the marine environment and, in turn, the economies and communities that depend on it.
“At the UN nature summit in Montreal, we made a commitment to manage our whole ocean sustainably and set a target to protect at least 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030.
“The UK is leading, co-leading, and supporting global coalitions of ambition to drive forward this mission, and I urge countries to come together to deliver coordinated, impactful action on the ground,” Ms Coffey was quoted as saying.
She also urged more countries to work together to stop illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which she said undermines efforts to conserve fish stocks, damages marine ecosystems, impacts global food supply chains and threatens coastal communities.
Thursday’s funding announcements will be drawn from the £154 million Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition programme (Coast) that was launched by Lord Goldsmith at the UN Ocean Conference in 2022 which will run until 2030 and is itself part of the wider £500 million Blue Planet Fund, which the Government said is to support “developing countries to protect the marine environment and reduce poverty”.
Story was adapted from the Independent.
