Global Ocean Treaty

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), my South West Bedfordshire constituency is about as far from the sea as you can get. So why does this debate matter to my constituents? Why am I here today? The reason is that the oceans produce half the oxygen that we breathe. It is worth pausing for a moment on that point, given how important oxygen to human life on the planet.

Oceans are the world’s largest carbon sink and have already absorbed 30% of all our carbon dioxide and 90% of the excess heat caused by human activities. Three billion people around the planet rely on the oceans for food and livelihoods. That is a huge number. Just think of the global economy and what would happen to those people if the oceans were not able to carry on supplying that food and their livelihoods. Protecting the high seas from industrial overfishing and mining can lock away carbon, while replenishing those all-important fish populations.

We should also remember the potential of the blue economy for the whole pharmaceutical sector. We know that fungi in the twilight zone of the oceans are highly likely to be a new and really important source of penicillin-like drugs for the future, which can help us to deal with some of the terrible health issues that we face. What is the problem that the global ocean treaty is trying to solve? We know that, sadly, two thirds of the high seas are already experiencing pollution, overfishing and the impacts of climate change. A third of global fish stocks are already overfished, and over a third of marine mammals, such as sharks, are under threat of extinction. Sharks are an incredibly important apex predator—many of us think they are to be feared, but we now know from marine biologists that they have a very important role in the whole ecosystem of marine life.

There is also the whole issue of plastic that is integrally bound up in this, which several other hon. Members have already mentioned. The United Nations believes that some 14 million tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean every year. We all do our bit as litter pickers, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said, and I am sure we have all tried to do our pathetically small amount on holiday. We all have to do what we can, but that is an absolutely huge amount. We also know that, in the first decade of the 21st century, more plastic was created than in the whole of history up to that point. The production of plastic is on an accelerating curve, and unless we do something about it, we will not get on top of this issue.

A quarter of all fish sold in Californian fish markets have plastic in their gut, according to some recent studies. There are four countries that dump more plastic in the sea than all other countries combined: China—which is by far the worst—Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. The Yangtze river pours more plastic into the ocean than any other river on the planet, and that cannot go on. I say to our friends in those countries—with a degree of humility, because our own record has not been perfect in the past—that that is an issue they need to get on top of.

What needs to be done to address those really serious problems? The UN high seas treaty was finalised in 2023, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal for her role in that. It took 20 years of negotiation, and that is a very long time. I am proud that the UK was a member of the so-called High Ambition Coalition to get it done, and I join what every other Member has said about trying to get it ratified as quickly as possible, to provide a really important lead on this issue. The UK blue belt around UK overseas territories has protected an area of ocean larger than the size of India, which is to be welcomed. Closer to home, around England, we have three highly protected marine areas as well, which are also very much to be welcomed. We need to ratify the treaty as quickly as possible. We also need the closely related UN global plastics treaty to be created and finalised by the end of 2024. I am pleased that the UK is a member of High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, because those two issues are integrally connected.