The key messages for the ocean to take from the 2024 Labour Party Conference

It can help kickstart the economy by securing existing and creating new jobs. It is crucial for making the UK the clean energy super power it wants to be, and it can help save the NHS and local councils money by improving health. This means it can help achieve at least three (if not more) of the Labour Party’s key missions for government.

But, and this is a very significant but, it can only do this if it is in good health – which it is not. Pollution from sewage, chemicals and plastics, rising sea levels, damage from floods and storms and the impacts of fishing beyond sustainable limits are all symptoms of poor ocean health, and coastal communities bear the brunt of the consequences.

What this means is that taking action for marine conservation is taking action to increase the economic, physical and environmental health of coastal communities.

Evidence also shows clearly that time spent by the sea is good for your health, and that these benefits increase if the marine environment is healthier. Nature-based prescribing has been estimated to have the potential to save £635m each year. This is mainly related to mental health, and, of course, preventing pollution from sewage or chemicals will also help protect people’s physical health.

All of this and more was the subject of much discussion at the Labour Party’s annual conference this week, at a roundtable for members of parliament from coastal communities organised by Labour Climate and Environment Forum, the National Oceanography Centre and the Marine Conservation Society, but also in many other events across the conference.

Pleas from coastal MPs were loud and clear: don’t ignore coastal communities. Investment is urgently needed, as is awareness raising and knowledge-building on the key role that our ocean plays in the lives and livelihoods of all the UK’s citizens.

Solutions are at hand – both in terms of improved regulations and their enforcement, and in terms of investment:

1) We need to ensure that there is an effective marine spatial management framework that directs activity to the least environmentally damaging areas and creates space for nature. Hand-in hand with this, there is a need to cement a nature recovery objective for GB Energy.

2) We need to deliver a high level of water quality through:

• Urgently strengthening existing and introducing new measures to monitor and tackle all sources of marine pollution, from sewage to chemicals, with special urgency given to preventing pollution of sensitive and high priority sites. Following through on promised laws on deposit return schemes and bans on plastic in wet wipes will help with this.
• Ensuring that regulatory authorities have the duties, as well as the necessary powers and resources to enforce all regulations.
• Delivering an urgent, ambitious, comprehensive reform of the water regulatory framework that has environmental (and ocean) recovery as a priority, next to serving customers.

3) We need to promote and facilitate investment in marine regeneration through the budget and the October spending review, but also through developing a Sustainable Blue Economy Strategy, which includes proposals for blue bonds, issued or guaranteed by state.

Underpinning this, there needs to be a commitment to put environmental – and ocean – conservation at the heart of government policy to deliver Government promises of being a Government for nature.

Some of these solutions are quick wins that could be delivered through improving existing mechanisms or through proposed new legislation on water. Some of them are not necessarily easy or quick, but they will ensure that both coastal communities – and the wider country – can maximise the benefits provided by healthy seas.