Call for UK to treat rewilding oceans with same urgency as reforestation

Campaigners are calling on the government to treat re wilding our oceans with the same level of urgency as reforestation as the UK battles to meet its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In a new report, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) andre wilding britain highlight that britain' s coastal waters cover 500,000 km 2 and store an estimated 205 million tonnes of carbon.

The total is 50 million tonnes more than the carbon locked up within the UK'S entire stock of standing forests.

The two organisations want the Government to develop an "ocean charter" to implement nature recovery plans as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation policies.

They also want to see" specific and ambitious" marine habitat recovery targets in theuk' s next nationally determined contribution to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2025.

The MCS and Rewilding Britain are calling for Government support to establish sustainable and low-carbon fisheries and aquaculture, such as the development of shellfish reefs.

In addition, they want a plan to halve fisheries-related carbon emissions by 2030 that includes emissions from fish processing and feed production in its accounting.

The MCS and Rewilding Britain' s research found that restoring sea grass, salt marsh, oyster reefs and kelp forests would give Britain a huge leap forward in meeting its carbon cutting goals.

The saltmarsh and seagrass habitat of the British Isles is thought to sequester 43,000 tonnes of carbon annually, the report said, a rate of between two and four times that of tropical forests.

Even in their current depleted state, the UK'S existing stock of saltmarshes and seagrass beds have the carbon storage potential of between 1,000 and 2,000 km2 of tropical forests, the research found.

It is estimated that globally, saltmarsh and seagrass beds can draw down up to 450 million tonnes of CO2 a year almost half the emissions of the entire global transport sector.

Currently the UK has about 427 km2 of saltmarshes, but is losing it at an estimated 100 hectares a year-or 0.2 percent of the total - with losses projected to reach 8 per cent by 2060.

The government has committed to planting 11 million trees by 2022, but now them sc wants to see similar commitments to the ocean and wetlands.

By 2019, 21.8 million hectares of UK waters had some degree of environmental protection, according to the Office for National Statistics.

But the two organisations accuse these of being "paper parks" with little or no enforcement banning the most damaging activities.

They want 30 per cent of UK waters to be designated Highly Protected Marine Areas by 2030, with strict limitations on the most damaging activities such as bottom trawling or dredging.

Both fishing methods, along with mining and oil and gas extraction, disturb the seabed, releasing stored carbon into the water column and reducing the ocean's capacity to store CO2.

It also rips out plant life, which is also key to carbon capture.

Currently, bottom trawling and dredging are only banned in 2 per cent of UK seas, the report found.