Climate Change

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the other Cross-Bench Peers who have supported this important debate. For my contribution this evening, I will stick in the mud to focus on our coastal fringes and particularly our intertidal habitat. As we all know from our earliest biology lessons, this is where terrestrial life began, and terrestrial life’s survival in the face of climate change depends on how we manage it.

This habitat is the most productive for protein, offering unparalleled biodiversity. It will protect our largest towns and cities from storms and rising tides; it provides carbon sequestration potential and cleans pollutants from the water; it is easily accessible, to the benefit of our health and well-being—yet it is ever changing and highly vulnerable, requiring constant, active and sympathetic management. Unfortunately, national policy and regulation largely ignore it. My request to the Minister is that he explain what the Government intend to do about this.

I declare my interests as set out in the register, including my membership of the Wetlands APPG and my stewardship of intertidal habitat on the Exe estuary. I also work for a law firm that is a leading adviser on natural capital and was recently engaged by a leading NGO to consider the regulation of our marine and coastal environment.

If we are to adapt to climate change, we need to regulate accordingly. Regulation of our natural capital has traditionally been siloed between Natural England’s responsibility for land and the Marine Management Organisation’s oversight of the marine environment. During the passage of both the Agriculture Act and the Environment Act this was noted repeatedly, including the failure of ELMS and other programmes to include the intertidal space, which provides such opportunity for the propagation of shellfish, seagrass and seaweed.

The UK shellfish industry generates nearly £l billion in revenue per annum, much of which is a high-margin, export-led business that supports coastal employment. Across the south-west the industry is threatened by warming water and the invasive Pacific oyster, which is rendering large areas of foreshore simply inaccessible and unfarmable. There is no joined-up strategy to combat it.

Seagrass absorbs and stores carbon and provides a vital home for nature. Healthy meadows can help protect communities from the impacts of coastal erosion and flooding, as well as reducing coastal pollution. We have lost up to 92% of the UK’s seagrass meadows.

Seaweed farming is both a regenerative food production method and a nature-based solution. It does not require additional land, feed, fresh water, fertiliser or pesticides, making it a very low-impact production method. It has the added advantage of absorbing excess nutrients from the sea, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. It can also temporarily remove carbon from the ocean and displace carbon-intensive products, helping to combat climate change.

Across the UK, ground-breaking projects in these industries experience delays and barriers in relation to licensing, impinging on the wider efforts to restore oceans, shift to sustainable food production and adapt to climate change. Concerns have been raised about the cost, complexity and time it takes to apply for licences and the lack of consistency from licensing bodies. The current licensing regime is simply not fit for purpose because it was designed to regulate building, development and extractive industries and was aimed at preventing damage to coastal habitats. It has the effect of inhibiting projects which would actively benefit coastal habitats and help us to adapt.

If we are to deliver on the environmental adaptation commitments of this Government, it is essential that we have a regulatory regime that is fit for purpose. I look forward to the Minister’s response and ask that he takes this issue forward with the appropriate departments across Whitehall.