The NFFO has criticised the moves by the UK government to expand the network of marine protected areas – with the intention of offsetting the damage caused by offshore wind.
The announcement has been made by Minister for Water and Flooding Emma Hardy – and the NFFO described this as demonstrating the ‘Labour government’s green credentials: they are enthusiastically recycling a policy snatched from the wreckage of their Conservative predecessors.’
‘Time and again, the authorities have granted permission for offshore wind farms to be built on the basis of environmental impact assessment reports invariably stating that each proposed development will cause no significant harm. Now those same developments are apparently so damaging that a slew of new marine protected areas is necessary to make up for it. Knowing this, will we now pause in our headlong rush to industrialise Britain’s seas, until we understand how successive governments got it all so wrong?’ an NFFO representative commented.
‘Of course not. Nothing, it seems will reduce the government’s enthusiasm for allowing foreign energy giants to build power stations in our waters. Instead, we will allow them to carry on as before, damaging the marine environment in one location, while pretending that this can somehow all be made better by ‘protecting’ the sea somewhere else.’
A great deal has been left unsaid as there has been no mention of the extent, location or management of these proposed MPAs.
‘The fact that fishermen are mentioned so explicitly in the Ministerial Statement is a worrying sign of how obviously our industry is in the firing line, but also a positive indicator of the government’s willingness to engage with us. Indeed, it is quite refreshing to hear politicians acknowledging that the decisions they are taking will impact the fishing industry,’ the NFFO states, adding that there has already been far too much empty rhetoric about ‘coexistence’ and ‘colocation’.
‘Now it is admitted that these proposals have the potential to damage fishing businesses, perhaps we can start to have the honest conversations and do the difficult work necessary to minimise and mitigate the harm that most of us in the fishing industry have seen coming for years.’
The NFFO has made a clear reminder that the Fisheries Act and the Joint Fisheries Statement are very clear in their commitment to treating environmental, social, economic and food supply concerns equally.
‘We assume that the government will abide by the law and carefully balance these concerns in any decision that it makes about this new system of MPAs. We assume also that the commitment to base marine management measures on the best available science will also be upheld and these new MPAs will not be more examples of lines drawn on charts to satisfy the desire to control the sea and ban things, with no coherent conservation purpose served,’ the NFFO states.
